This exceptional book is an encyclopaedic study of the building of the eighteenth-century churches of Britain. Friedman's aim is to ‘recover lost continuities as well as to provide the same comprehensiveness enjoyed by other building types’ (p. xii) and he achieves these ends magnificently. A key element in the success of the volume is the copious illustrations of very high quality and the CD of sources upon which Friedman drew in writing the book. It is clear that the volume represents a lifetime of work on the architectural history of churches and on their illustration in paintings, engravings and plans. The book is arranged into thirty short but detailed chapters which analyse the process of planning and building churches, the styles and the architects who designed and constructed them. For the most part Anglican churches predominate although there is coverage of Wales, Scotland and Ireland and of Nonconformist chapels and synagogues. Friedman has to cope with the despoliation of both the Victorians and the bombing of the twentieth century – and it is not always clear which was the more damaging. However of 629 new buildings considered, 462 survive in some form and Freidman does a great service in tracking down some of the prints and photographs of buildings that do not survive.

What Friedman contributes to the wider study of the church in the eighteenth century is his admirable treatment of the funding of the buildings. As demand for new churches grew churchwardens and the vestry had to use pew sales, church rates, mortgages and subscriptions to fund construction. Some enterprising urban parishes used music and oratorios as a means to raise funds (a performance of Handel's Messiah in Wakefield in 1767 raised £500) and proprietary chapels were sometimes funded by benefactors and occasionally built by speculators who calculated that sales of tickets would fund the building. Surprisingly Friedman does not consider sermons as the major fundraisers of the period. However he does explore the ways in which churches exploited funerals as major sources of income, Westminster Abbey earning over a hundred guineas from Garrick's funeral and selling over 130 monument spaces during the century. The sums to be raised for a new church were daunting. The Commission for Fifty New Churches paid £33,000 for St Martin in the Fields and even All Saints Newcastle cost £27,000. It is not surprising therefore that the Gentleman's Magazine calculated that a new church needed a population of 9,500 to justify it. Nor was it altogether good taste that motivated the building of Palladian churches, since these were often much cheaper to construct than Georgian gothic or baroque churches: Wren's SS Anne and Agnes came in at just over £2,000 and St James's Westminster at £7,000. Friedman also recovers some of the importance of the interior design and layout of the eighteenth-century church. Acoustics were important in church design but were not always effective, as at St Pauls, and in churches where domes and rotundas tended to absorb rather than reflect sound.

Friedman is especially good on two key aspects of the eighteenth-century church: the work of planners and surveyors and the architectural features of the churches. The eighteenth century witnessed a transition from Hawksmoor's dismissive view of ‘workmen advanced to architects’ to the precise design of churches which included the most extraordinary wooden models and plans which were themselves works of art. Supplying the materials for the buildings was a complex task, among other things requiring imports of timber from the Baltic, Russia and Turkey. This was the era of new technologies such as the development of cast iron which was increasingly used in window frames. Stucco, plaster, wainscoting, boarding, tiling, paving, whitewashing and faux marble all get good coverage. But of course it is the architects: Wren, Gibbs, Hawksmoor, Smith, Keene, Malton and scores of others who are the principal heroes of Friedman's book, and they get impressive treatment. By carefully distinguishing between gothic, transitional gothic, baroque, Romanesque, Palladian, temple form, neo-classical and other styles, Friedman shows how taste interacted with a wide range of material forces. And in a final chapter ‘beyond Britain’ Friedman traces the influence of eighteenth-century church architecture and design in North America, India and the Caribbean.

Thus far, it is difficult to find flaws in Friedman's approach and treatment –though he is both opinionated and colloquial in equal measure; Thomas Pennant's views are dismissed as ‘Sassenach’ (p. xii), disadvantages are termed ‘a downside’ (p. 83) and the phrase ‘common moniker’ makes an appearance on page 343. There are occasional slips as when the bishop of Bath and Wells appears as the ‘bishop of Wells’ (p. 66) and Bishop Richard Trevor becomes ‘Sir Robert Trevor’ (p. 481). But the principal weakness of the book is that it does not draw sufficiently – or at all – on scholarship on religion in the period. Consequently Friedman rehearses tired old nineteenth-century clichés and myths of negligent clergy, slumbering congregations and a ‘melancholy’ account of dilapidated churches and parsonages. This is remarkable because throughout the rest of the book Freidman testifies to the vibrancy and vitality of eighteenth-century religious culture – referring to the ‘range of activities connected with churchgoing’ as ‘an index to Georgian daily life’ (p. 85). In describing the churchscapes of the Georgian town Friedman explains how central to both urban and rural life religion was and sees the need for church accommodation as creating a demand that outstripped supply. So there is an unexplained incongruity in Friedman's study which affects its value to scholars of religious history. Nevertheless it would be mean-spirited to dismiss the book on these grounds; while the omission of this scholarly context weakens the book it is not a fatal flaw. In all other respects Friedman has produced a work that will become the standard account of the architecture and construction of the eighteenth-century church for a generation.