The Church Building Commission was set up in 1818 to solve intractable social, political and religious problems - by bring the Anglican Church to the godless towns and cities of the world's first industrial nation. Professor Port - one of Britain's most respected architectural historians - has updated and extensively remodelled his classic 1961 study of the commission published 45 years ago, adding much new material and a wealth of illustrations, many of them never published before.

He tells of the setting up of the Commission, the trials and tribulations of its labours, the buildings it erected, and the architects who designed them. Historic and modern photographs, plans and drawings reveal all a huge diversity of architecture, much of it of the highest quality. It is clear that, far from being a modest prelude to the full-blown Gothic Revival, the Commissioners' Churches were an essential factor in making possible the great Victorian explosion of church building.

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