The Oxford Region occupies a central position in southern England and its buildings exhibit the influences both of the western cruck tradition and of more eastern forms. It is also rich in building materials, which are very well treated in a chapter devoted to their variety and their conversion. There is chalk and flint from the Chilterns in the east, the superb limestone mainly from the west, clays suitable for bricks and fine oak woodlands for timber-framing. This sumptuously produced book is the first extended work to focus exclusively on the region’s traditional buildings.

Of the ninety-one buildings marked on a map on the inside cover, eighty are situated in the enlarged Oxfordshire which encompasses a substantial area formerly in Berkshire before the local government reforms of 1974. The remaining eleven buildings are scattered amongst the reduced Berkshire (five), Wiltshire (three), Gloucestershire, Buckinghamshire and Hampshire (one each), Whitchurch, the lone Hampshire example, lying some twenty miles from the post-1974 Oxfordshire boundary.

In the introduction the authors state that the book ‘is about the recording of buildings in the Oxford Region’ and indeed by far the greater part of the book is devoted to surveys recorded during twenty years of research. The account of each building runs to several pages and is clearly the product of thorough and thoughtful recording. Moreover, each building is lavishly illustrated with a selection of measured plans and sections, colour photographs, reconstruction drawings, annotated sketches, cut-away diagrams, distribution maps and some charming watercolours.

In general, chapters essentially comprise a number of surveys of individual buildings prefaced by a rather brief discussion of the common theme. Some chapters are devoted to buildings of a particular status (manorial buildings, village houses of the middling sort, cottages); some to form (cruck buildings); some to function (farm buildings, brewhouses, inns and public houses); and some to position (town houses and houses in the countryside). Clearly any one building could be looked for in several chapters but, given the rich variety of material, it is hard to see how this could have been avoided. There are also useful chapters or appendices on such things as fire hazards and fire prevention, apotropaic marks, ferramenta, carpentry details and wall paintings.

In a book of more than 450 pages that offers such a wealth of material so beautifully presented, it is perhaps unduly demanding to have looked for a fuller analysis of regional building types compared with those of adjacent regions and a fuller discussion of the chronological development of regional plan-forms and roof structures. Having said this, the heart of the book is the record of a fascinating selection of buildings, some, like Ashbury Manor, fully deserving a chapter on their own. Certainly the book gave great pleasure to this reviewer who, as a schoolboy more than sixty years ago, rode his bicycle through the then-quiet villages of the region wondering what was within the buildings that he passed by. Now, thanks to the authors of this book, he knows much more.