Cheshire (The King’s England)

Description

There have been many books on Cheshire, but never one like this…

The perfect historic guide to Cheshire churches, castles and other historic places.

Arthur Mee’s guide to 150 places in Cheshire, from Acton to Wybunbury, provides both a snapshot of the county before the Second World War and a comprehensive guidebook to the county’s heritage which remains invaluable for travellers and historians alike to this day. This facsimile edition is aided by 117 unique photographs which accompanied the original 1938 text.

Arthur Mee (1875-1943), already famous for the Children’s Encyclopedia, created the King’s England series of county guides in the 1930s. In his own words, “There has been nothing like it before: it is the first census of the ancient and beautiful and curious historic possessions of England since the motor car came to make it possible…” Mee and his team of researchers drove the length and breadth of Britain to gather information about the nation’s heritage in what he regarded as “A New Domesday of 10,000 towns and villages” – certainly the most comprehensive guide of its time and arguably unbeaten by anything until Wikipedia. Although this series of 40 books is now almost 80 years old, it remains a fantastic guide to England’s cities, towns and villages, sometimes poignantly revealing what they were like before the terrors of the Second World War, and always celebrating our history with humour and a lightness of touch.