Download Nooks and Corners of Old England by Allan Fea. A richly illustrated travel and antiquarian history of England’s villages, old houses, churches, inns, and byways. Available in PDF, EPUB, MOBI, and AZW3 formats.
About Nooks and Corners of Old England
Nooks and Corners of Old England by Allan Fea is a richly illustrated 1908 journey through overlooked towns, villages, inns, churches, manor houses, roads, and historic byways across England. Ideal for readers who enjoy travel writing, antiquarian history, old architecture, and local legend, it records the character of places often missed by ordinary tourists and uncovers the stories preserved in England’s quieter corners.
Why Read Nooks and Corners of Old England?
When Allan Fea begins Nooks and Corners of Old England, he starts from the pleasure of old maps and remembered rambles. The book grows out of journeys away from the obvious routes, where a village street, an inn yard, a bridge, a church, or a half-forgotten house can open unexpectedly into history.
Nooks and Corners of Old England is an excellent choice for readers who enjoy travel writing with an antiquarian eye. Fea is less interested in famous tourist monuments than in the local, picturesque, and half-hidden places where the past still seems close: Huntingdonshire and North Northants, Suffolk, Norfolk, Warwickshire, Worcestershire, Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Somerset, Devon, Dorset, Staffordshire, Derbyshire, and Yorkshire all provide material for his roaming account.
The book combines landscape description, architectural observation, local history, and anecdote. Fea notices old inns, gabled houses, bridges, parish churches, manor houses, village customs, historic associations, and curious survivals. His England is not only a country of scenery, but a country of memory, where buildings and place names preserve traces of kings, courtiers, diarists, soldiers, highwaymen, and ordinary village lives.
One of the pleasures of the work is its sense of discovery. Fea writes as a traveller who enjoys turning aside, following a road because it looks promising, or pausing over a detail that a more hurried observer might miss. The result is a book full of small rewards: an ancient hostelry, a worn inscription, a local tradition, a forgotten battlefield, or a house whose irregular shape hints at older stories.
The illustrations and photographic material strengthen the book’s documentary charm. Fea’s descriptions are often visual, lingering over timber, stone, weathered surfaces, courtyards, towers, signboards, and village streets. He treats old places as living witnesses, not simply as picturesque decorations, and his enthusiasm gives the travel narrative a warm, companionable quality.
Readers who enjoy English travel literature, local history, historic buildings, antiquarian rambles, and books about the character of old towns and villages will find Nooks and Corners of Old England absorbing and atmospheric. It remains a delightful guide to the overlooked corners where English history still feels embedded in the road, the wall, the churchyard, and the inn sign.
