This is a reassessment of the phenomenon of church architecture in the 19th century. It presents a range of interpretations that approach Victorian churches as products of institutional needs, socio-cultural developments, and economic forces. The book's contributors, including Gavin Stamp, and Martin Cherry of English Heritage, cover a wide range of city and country churches across England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, and offer ways of reading churches as architectural statements that were both constructed by, and helped to construct, Victorian society as a whole. They cover a wide range of topics, such as Pugin, the medieval influence on religion and design, restoration, financial support for both urban an rural church building, and the influence on architectural design of the many different religions emerging at the time.