By Nicholas Mander; 2009; 208 pp.
Rizzoli; Hardcover

Although this volume covers the whole history of the great stone houses of England’s scenic Cotswolds, discussing surviving examples from all periods, the book has particular interest for students of the Arts and Crafts period, when architects and aesthetes encountered and embraced these historical structures. The harmony between building and setting, the fine craftsmanship of the stone exteriors and wood interiors, and the beauty of the landscape (which had escaped industrialization due to a lack of raw materials), drew artists, poets and craftsmen. William Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti leased Kelmscott Manor, C.R. Ashbee settled into the medieval Woolstaplers Hall when his Guild of Handicraft moved itself out of London to the rural market town of Chipping Campden, and a number of other Arts and Crafts figures made the region their home base. The book’s author, Nicholas Mander, lives in Owlpen Manor, a 15th-century structure carefully restored in the 1920s by Arts and Crafts architect Norman Jewson; this experience gives Mander special insight into the impact of the Cotswolds on the movement, and of the movement on the Cotswolds.