Context 165 - August 2020

C O N T E X T 1 6 5 : A U G U S T 2 0 2 0 53 Vox pop Geoff Brandwood How did you come to be involved with buildings? Rather as a latecomer – not until after graduating with a geography degree and taking up a job with British Steel, where I spent some 30 years as a commercial manager. Studying buildings was a part-time activity in between work and family. The trigger, I suppose, was a book I picked up in the early 1970s on churches in Hampshire, where I was working at the time.When I moved to Leicestershire, I started a systematic study with a particular focus on what the Victorians got up to. This led to a PhD on 19th-century church-building and restoration in the county, and a chance to revise the church entries for the new edition of the revised Pevsner for Leicestershire which, I think, was the first (1984) in the enlarged format. Who has been your greatest inspiration? Three people particularly. On moving to the midlands I joined an adult education group organised by David Parsons of the Leicester University history department, which taught me to look at church buildings analytically and to pick my way through documentary material. David became a friend, as did Martin Cherry (then working in Leicester and later head of listing at English Heritage) and the late Chris Brooks at Exeter University, who were looking at Victorian church work in Devon. Martin and Chris gave me great encouragement and got me closely involved with the Victorian Society, where I eventually became chair for six years from 2001. Where do pubs come in? Shortly after retiring in 1997, I was fortunate to secure a two-year post funded by the Campaign for Real Ale and English Heritage to look at the pubs CAMRA had identified as having surviving historic interiors. There were rather fewer than one might have wished, following the overwhelming amount of change since the 1960s.We got many listed and list descriptions improved. I have continued to do voluntary work for CAMRA ever since to raise awareness of the precious survivors. What would you like to be doing in five years’ time? I am now aged 75, so I guess the top priority is still being here. Over those intervening years I would like to do more architectural photography. During the past dozen years it has been a great satisfaction to illustrate my own books and for those of others with pictures that try to do their subjects justice. I was particularly proud that Yale University Press chose my shot of Clumber Chapel in Nottinghamshire for the cover of Michael Hall’s magisterial book on GF Bodley. What are some of your favourite buildings? This sort of question always seems to require a slightly offbeat answer. So let’s sidestep the staggering great gothic cathedrals St Columba, Scarborough: the architect Temple Moore’s proto-brutalist take on gothic