Ancestral Houses: The Lost Mansions of Wales, Paul White, Damian Walford Davies and Sian Melangell Dafydd, 2012, Gomer Press, 119p, ISBN 9781848513981, £19-99.

This is not a conventional local history book: it contains a series of black and white photographs, taken by Paul White, from forty-three Welsh houses in various serious states of decay, a very small minority of which have subsequently experienced some restoration. It is, therefore a perspective on what happens to abandon buildings. This photographic survey is then accompanied by a bi-lingual literary commentary provided by Damian Walford Davies and Sian Melangell Dafydd. Their text does give a strong atmospheric sense of the context in which these buildings now find themselves but what is said goes beyond the boundaries of the interest of local historians.

However Paul White's original intention was to record what was being lost over time from Welsh building heritage and in this he is very successful. His selection from all over Wales shows that there is a wide problem in terms of maintenance and re-use of potentially historically significant buildings. Each of the authors nominates what would be their first preference in saving and restoring a building: my personal choice would be Plas Gwynfryn at Llanystumdwy in Caernarfonshire. Built in 1876, it reveals an angular Gothic splendour, with its two towers, still contributing a distinctive skyline to the locality.

This is very useful both from a scholarly perspective but also for the enthusiastic explorer of the unsuspecting treasures to be found in the remoter part of Wales.