Churches: How to Read Them - Restoration and Reason

Church life in the 18th century is often thought to have been genteel and rather dull, but Richard Taylor finds that churches in this Age of Enlightenment reflect the intellectual excitement, the vigour and the potential for conflict of a turbulent time. Richard shows how the symbols in even the most everyday parish church reveal the ever-closer identification between church and state and he tries out the extraordinary triple-decker pulpit at St Mary's in Whitby. In a lightning tour of the London churches of Sir Christopher Wren and Nicholas Hawksmoor, he discovers how they reflect the latest scientific insights and archaeological discoveries of the age. And in the startling simplicity of Baptist and Methodist chapels and meeting houses, he taps into the burgeoning spirit of dissent that brought the monopoly of the parish church to an end.