Out of the Rock….

Description

From the cover: “The Roman legions and the Holy Roman missionaries who followed them were to endow successive patrons through fifteen hundred years with a respect and love for the limestones of Wessex. The granites of the Welsh mountains, where the Ordovices had cut primitive axes for their survival, became essential to the Industrial Revolution when canals, roads, and railways all needed stone. Here, stories of Inigo Jones, Christopher Wren, John Wood, Brunei, Telford and McAdam reveal the progress of building and the development of transport systems as the harnessing of steam — to be followed shortly by electricity and oil — brought power and mechanization to industry. Out of the Rock… tells the story of the first sixty years’ development of The Bath and Portland Group, now pre20,00eminent in the stone industry. But the author has seen his subject as a cornerstone of history, putting the important and fascinating contribution made by the Group into perspective with England’s political, social, and industrial history. In the broad sweep chosen by the author from prehistory to the Second World War, a pattern of cause and effect between science and history has been woven, to show man’s discoveries of long ago as forerunners of the sophisticated world we know today.”