Read Anywhere and on Any Device!

Subscribe to Read | $0.00

Join today and start reading your favorite books for Free!

Create Free Account

Pastoral Peculiars: Curiosities in the Countryside

3.6/5 ( ratings)

They could be off-beat water towers, singular obelisks or jackdawed hilltop follies. These are the isolated curios of the English countryside; the landmarks that tick-off our rural progressions, oddities out of the corner of the eye that always raise a query, a need for an answer. Are those really army badges scoured from that downland chalk? Why do those stout brick castles have no doors or windows? Was that a towering gibbet, or a sinister trick of the light? Pastoral Peculiars puts us into metaphorical wellington boots, taking us out into the fields and scurrying along the hedgerows to dig out the curious and to tell us the stories that placed them there. The fading reminders of past industriousness alone in a sheep pasture; dressed stone for an abbey rising up out of fenland peat and the discarded and forgotten icons of rural life still wanting to tell their tales. In his inimitable style, Peter Ashley gives us an alternative view of the vaguely familiar, an idiosyncratic account in words and beautifully atmospheric photographs of the blips in the measured pulse of the English countryside.

Language: English

Pages: 119

Format: Paperback

Publisher: Historic England Press

Release: December 01, 2005

ISBN: 1850749604

ISBN 13: 9781850749608

Pastoral Peculiars: Curiosities in the Countryside

3.6/5 ( ratings)

They could be off-beat water towers, singular obelisks or jackdawed hilltop follies. These are the isolated curios of the English countryside; the landmarks that tick-off our rural progressions, oddities out of the corner of the eye that always raise a query, a need for an answer. Are those really army badges scoured from that downland chalk? Why do those stout brick castles have no doors or windows? Was that a towering gibbet, or a sinister trick of the light? Pastoral Peculiars puts us into metaphorical wellington boots, taking us out into the fields and scurrying along the hedgerows to dig out the curious and to tell us the stories that placed them there. The fading reminders of past industriousness alone in a sheep pasture; dressed stone for an abbey rising up out of fenland peat and the discarded and forgotten icons of rural life still wanting to tell their tales. In his inimitable style, Peter Ashley gives us an alternative view of the vaguely familiar, an idiosyncratic account in words and beautifully atmospheric photographs of the blips in the measured pulse of the English countryside.

Language: English

Pages: 119

Format: Paperback

Publisher: Historic England Press

Release: December 01, 2005

ISBN: 1850749604

ISBN 13: 9781850749608

More books from Peter Ashley

Unmitigated England

4.2/5 ( ratings)

Preposterous Erections: A Book of English Towers

Railway Rhymes

3.6/5 ( ratings)

London Peculiars: A Handbook for Offbeat Explorers

3.5/5 ( ratings)

More From Unmitigated England

4.4/5 ( ratings)

Cross Country: English Buildings And Landscape From Countryside To Coast

4.2/5 ( ratings)

The Cigarette Papers: A Eulogy for the Cigarette Packet in Anecdote and Literature

4.3/5 ( ratings)

Whistle Stops: Railway Architecture

The English Buildings Book

Beside the Sea: Maritime Style

A Human Reaction

English Allsorts

Angry People Smiling

The English Buildings Book

Built for Britain: Bridges to Beach Huts

Bridging the Gap: Bridges (English Heritage Pocket Books)

Hard Furnishings: Street Furniture (English Heritage Pocket Books)

The Stone

GAMBLING Taking the Bookies to the Cleaners

Liam the Lonely Leprechaun

Rate this book!

Write a review?