Old Parish Life, edited by Justin Lovill Rev Peter

One of this book’s many beautiful colour plates shows a view of the nave of the cathedral, quite reminiscent of de Witte’s 17th-century paintings of the interiors of Dutch churches.

Nothing is overlooked by O’Brien in his description of Guildford itself.

Everything is described in such clear detail: from the churches, the 16th-century grammar school, the almshouses and public buildings, the Yvonne Arnaud theatre, the library, the police station. He even finds a place for the Guildford High School for girls – of which your reviewer is an alumna, without at the time having appreciated the ‘gentle English classicism’ of the building in which she studied.

He is rightly merciless about the ‘tangle of highways … and one-way systems’ created by the planners around the two bridges crossing the river Wey at the bottom of the town.

But within a few miles of Guildford are to be found many houses of note. There is Sutton Place, built in the first half of the 16th century, visited by Henry VIII and later owned by J Paul Getty Sr.

Loseley Park, built in the 1560s, is ‘the best house of its date in the county’. Polesden Lacey has had many incarnations; today it is entirely Edwardian. It represents, says O’Brien, ‘some of the most attractive Edwardian in the country’. At East Clandon, there is Hatchlands Park.

At West Clandon, there are the remains of Clandon Park, an 18th-century Palladian house, acquired by the National Trust in 1956 and burnt to a shell in 2015. The house had been renowned for its marble hall – a 40ft cube, the ceiling of which comprised some of the finest plasterwork in the country. Now no longer. A colour plate of that hall is here to remind us of its lost beauty.

But this book is not just about towns and grand buildings. Every village and every church of note is described in exquisite detail. Many a holiday could be spent sightseeing in this much-maligned county. Despite what O’Brien describes as ‘a particularly mean kind of village expansion’ in the 20th century, parts of the county remain entirely rural. At every turn, there are undreamt-of monuments, stained-glass windows, clocktowers and farmhouses of beauty and interest.

Owing to the creation of Greater London and the consequent loss of boroughs such as Barnes and Richmond, the county has shrunk since Pevsner’s and Nairn’s day. Nevertheless, O’Brien has had his work cut out, partly because of the inclusion of many modern buildings and a greater coverage of 19th- and 20th-century churches.

This is a work of extraordinary scholarship, to be dipped into or to study. It’s certainly to be taken with you when you are next fortunate enough to be in Surrey.

Teresa Waugh was brought up at Clandon Park, Surrey

More glee, vicar

REV PETER MULLEN Old Parish Life Edited by Justin Lovill Bunbury Press £20

Reading this book, I was shocked to discover what had been happening in St Michael’s, Cornhill, in the City of London – my old parish – in 1959, before my time there as rector:

‘Fined – John Wilkins for going about the street in women’s apparel, being the parish clerk at that time. His explanation to the court was that at a marriage in a merriment he did disguise himself in his wife’s dress to make some mirth for the company.’

This great, fat, sumptuously illustrated book has a fascinating anecdote like this not just here and there, but on every page. I have sat through hundreds of churchwardens’ meetings and been bored silly by their annual accounts and never come across anything more interesting than the price of hymnbooks or a new boiler.

Here is a treasure house of information, history, meticulous detail and fascinating revelations. This is what church history should be like. It is a sort of religious version of that scurrilous old Sunday paper the News of the World: all ecclesiastical life is here.

‘1617: Thomas Tailer for misbehavinge himself with his dogge in the church in the time of divine service.’ That was at Hawton in Nottinghamshire.

At West Pennard, a parishioner tied his dog to a bell rope and had it run around, tinkling and clanging, during the sermon. In 1603 in Winchester, Joan Golding was fined 6/8d ‘for baptising a cat’.

There is plenty of seriously surprising stuff here too: ‘1536: To Thomas Tallis for half yere’s wages, £4 – St Mary-at-Hill.’

What! Four quid for one of the greatest English composers, the creator of the musical setting for the Litany (still sung today in that remnant of churches that have not gone over to Jiving for Jesus worship songs) and his heavenly 40-part motet Spem in alium.

There is social history here, too, not in the form of a tedious academic disquisition but in a thousand touching little tales, such as: ‘1592 – Annis Parker, infant daughter supposed of Thomas Parker of Mordoun, beinge lefte in the churche portch by that harlot her mother, buried December 18th.’

Or this: ‘1730: for getting the Irish women away to Ireland – £1-1s Leyton Essex.’

There were other calls on church funds: ‘1563: for gunpowder to beat ye starlings from ye churche, 9d St Martin, Leicester.’

But there was also charity: ‘1687: married at the expense of the parish, King and Queen of the jepsies [Gypsies] Robert Hem and Elizabeth Bozwell – Camberwell, Surrey.’

Dodgy deeds abounded, as in 1587, when, in the parish of Startforth, a priest married ‘an unknown tinker with a girle of 12 yere olde neither being of that parish for 2/6d’.

There are scenes both quaint and ingenious: ‘1832 5th November, Christopher Newsam married Charity Morrell. She being entirely without arms, the ring was placed upon the fourth toe of the left foot, and she wrote her name in this register with her right foot – St James, Bury St Edmunds.’

And then there’s the macabre, such as the burial of a deceased’s bowels only in the parish where death occurs, with

‘We’ve decided to hire someone else ... as soon as someone else applies’