Slightly off-mint.

In no other ancient European port is every major stage of its history represented by the recovered remains of ships and boats, waterfronts, warehouses and even former cargoes. Using this material evidence along with manuscript sources, Peter Marsden gives accounts of the design, construction and uses of vessels from 21 sites, ranging in date from the Custom House boat (c.1160–90) to the Blackfriars ship, a barge that sank with a cargo of bricks in 1670. Off-mint.

Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown’s success in creating landscapes that could be ‘mistaken for Nature’ meant that his methods often went unnoticed and there has been surprisingly little professional analysis of his work. Drawing on fresh documentary evidence and illustrated with colour photographs, paintings and Brown’s own sketches and plans, this book examines the 270 landscapes he designed, from Blenheim Palace to St James’s Park in London, and clarifies his ideas and techniques.

From Hale’s Tours of the World at 165 Oxford Street and its rival, Tivoli Tourist Station on The Strand in around 1906, to the opening of the Apollo West End in Lower Regent Street in 2004, this detailed and well-illustrated English Heritage survey covers all the cinemas that have operated in London since those early ‘virtual reality’ travel shows.

From deserted streets at ‘the dawn of popular motoring’, to the infamous ‘Spaghetti Junction’ in 1971, this collection of around 150 aerial photographs and commentaries shows the impact of the first 50 years of motoring, not only on road traffic, but also on the built environment.

Originally set up in 1919, Aerofilms Ltd was taken into the Air Ministry’s reconnaissance unit during the war and for the rest of the century carried out commercial operations photographing Britain’s landmarks from above. Selecting from an archive of over a million items and accompanied by historical notes, this portfolio displays images of ports and harbours, famous ships, Naval bases, shipyards, and seaside leisure facilities, from the Mauretania at Southampton in the 1930s to London’s regenerated docklands in the 1990s.

Studying the country house in Britain and Europe as site, product and process of consumption, this volume of 19 illustrated papers explores the complex flows of goods, people and ideas in houses such as Stoneleigh Abbey, Wrest Park and the Dundas properties, Aske Hall and Moor Park. The book is in five parts: elites and consumption; continuity and heritage; eastern connections, adoptions and imitations; country house interiors as lived spaces; and presentation.

Once an archaeological dig has been completed, artists’ imaginative reconstructions play an important role in the process of developing a coherent picture of the site and communicating this interpretation to experts, students and the general public. Through an exploration of seven illustrators’ approaches to the task, including analysis of their working sketches, Dobie reveals the extent to which such artistic visualizations can complement scientific data and encourage new and vivid ways of seeing and understanding the world of our ancestors.

The culmination of years of painstaking research by Jonathan Coad, the foremost architectural historian of the royal dockyards, this English Heritage volume charts the history of the construction, establishment and evolution of the Royal Navy’s bases – including dockyards, ordnance yards, naval hospitals, barracks and associated buildings – during the periods of expansion after the Napoleonic wars and global dominance during the 19th century.

An archaeologist who has been studying Stonehenge for 40 years, Julian Richards clearly explains the development of our greatest prehistoric monument in a richly illustrated and accessible volume. He places the complex structures of Stonehenge in their landscape of burial and ceremony, and examines both practical approaches to and current theories about how and why it was built. Off-mint.

Rail enthusiast Steven Parissien explores England’s rail network, from the genesis of early rail companies and the building of the great ‘cathedrals’ such as St Pancras, through to the creation of British Rail and the stations lost in recent decades. With modern and contemporary photographs of many stations, it traces their architectural development and place in social history.

The 18th-century English landscape garden, with its seemingly natural appearance, was a revolution in design and its legacy can still be seen in gardens and parks. In this well-illustrated history Symes traces the origins and evolution of the style; discusses its place in contemporary politics, philosophy and culture; and surveys its variations through the works of major designers, from William Kent and the ‘pictorial garden’ to Humphrey Repton and the Picturesque.

In chapters on architectural drawings, maps and mapping conventions, topographical views and other visual sources including models, pattern books, guide books and photographs, a group of architectural and art historians explain the provenance, purpose and terminology of a range of visual sources from the 16th to 20th centuries, and how they can help – and sometimes hinder – an understanding of an original building and its history.

Developing in the 19th century, Weston-super-Mare quickly grew from a small village to a thriving resort, attracting holidaymakers from Bath and Bristol as well as across the estuary from South Wales. This historical survey analyses the growth of the town as entertainments and attractions sprang up to entice tourists and distinctive terraces, villas and crescents were built to house new residents.

The health benefits of sea-bathing first encouraged people to visit the seafront in the 18th century and even small towns without a port or harbour, like Blackpool, began to develop as resorts. This highly illustrated volume, with historic and contemporary photographs, prints and illustrations, examines the history, geography, economy, architecture, entertainments and future of the British seaside resort.

Victory in the two world wars would have been impossible without the railways: ‘everything that was grown, made or mined, had to be carried, and soldiers, sailors, airmen, and civilians also had to be carried.’ The scale of the task and dangers faced by the women and men of the railways were enormous, and this book, with its wealth of statistics and archival photography, pays tribute to the resourcefulness of railway staff, from cleaners and clerks to drivers and porters.

Bletchley Park and Blenheim Palace, Lindisfarne Priory, the Martyrs’ tree in Tolpuddle, and a water pump in Broadwick Street, Soho, are a few of the historically meaningful places that were nominated by the public and selected by Historic England’s experts for the Irreplaceable project. Arranged by ten themes, from science and discovery to protest, the book offers a richly illustrated, multi-faceted history of the country, explored through the landscapes and built environments around us today.

Drawing together studies by English Heritage and Historic England’s archaeologists and historians, this volume explores the physical effects of the First World War on the English countryside and built environments. Among the topics discussed in the ten illustrated essays are army camps, airfields and coastal defences; munitions factories, civic and civilian building during wartime and the impact of enemy blockade on the nation’s agriculture; and a final essay examines the building of war memorials.

On a foggy morning in 1917, a large British mail ship travelling dangerously fast off the Isle of Wight collided with SS Mendi, a steamship carrying more than 600 members of the South African Native Labour Corps (SANLAC). The Mendi sank in 20 minutes, leaving few survivors. Drawing on recent archeological evidence from the wreck, the book reconsiders this terrible tragedy and tells the story of the SANLAC in the British war effort.

Britain’s Jewish community is its longest-established religious minority and, since its readmission to the country in the 17th century, has created a rich architectural legacy of synagogues and charitable institutions. Illustrated in colour, this book remains the only comprehensive guide to such sites, from the ancient Jew’s House in Lincoln to London’s historic Bevis Marks Synagogue. It includes easy-to-follow heritage trails around former Jewish quarters, with full postcodes for satnav users. Slightly off-mint.

The Great Barn at Harmondsworth, built in 1425-1427 for Winchester College, was rescued and restored by English Heritage between 2011 and 2014. After an introductory chapter describing the ancient estate to which it belonged, this detailed study explores why, how and when the barn was built, the ingenuity and oddities of its construction, the trades, materials and people involved, and the way the barn was used, both in medieval times and during its later history.

During the Cold War a complex infrastructure of defence installations was built across Britain in response to the threat from nuclear weapons. After 1989 many of these formerly secret sites were considered obsolete and abandoned. This volume reports the findings of a project to identify those most in need of preservation, with photographs (both archive and modern) of the buildings, Ordnance Survey images, cutaway diagrams, architectural plans and ephemera, while the detailed text explains their purpose and construction and the historical background.

Ditherington Mill in Shrewsbury is one of the great monuments to the British Industrial Revolution. Built in 1796-1800, the Spinning Mill is recognized as the world's first iron-framed fireproof building. This study, illustrated with photographs, plans and reproductions, tells the story of the Mill through its life as a linen factory, then as a maltings, and shows how it was linked to the developments in engineering, the textile industry and business practices that were driving the nation's economy forward.