Building the Parish Church in Late Medieval England: Architecture, Art, and Collaborative Gothic Monument

Building the Parish Church in Late Medieval England investigates the architectural, artistic, and cultural significance of local places of worship between the Black Death and the Reformation. Zachary Stewart provides the first systematic account of an exceptional type of parish church distinguished by the absence of any structural division between nave and chancel. Tracking its development across time, place, and setting, he explores how the type's integrated format not only expressed but also reinforced and reproduced collective processes related to the conception, construction, and customization of parochial space. The result, he argues, was nothing less than a new kind of public monument to collaborative action. Informed by a wealth of archival, archaeological, and architectural research, with special attention to East Anglia, Stewart's study demonstrates the importance of the parish church as a center for innovative material production in late medieval England. It also reveals how non-elite social arrangements shaped local life on the eve of the modern era.