CONTEXT 176 : JUNE 2023 49 a visually busy scene. Others depict the more abject face of urban poverty in a way which is uncomfortable to look at. Perhaps there is also a niggling worry that, for all the social reforming motives of the photographers, the pictures seem a little bit voyeuristic. A photograph by Nora Smyth of a street in Bow in 1914 is one of the more harrowing images of poverty. Even there a boy poses as if in mid-air, with one foot on a window cill and the other in a cavity in the brickwork lining the alley, displaying something of the cockiness and confidence of Londoners that often shines through. In another photograph, a group of much better clothed and shod lads in Poplar in 1928 sit on a doorstep grinning at the camera. Beyond the rich architectural record and the poignant images of thousands of people who were once flesh and blood, fixed by the camera shutter, the fascination of the book is in the particularity of the moment. Groups of people pose for the photographer in Tower Hamlets in 1912 while in the background a newsagent’s placard gives the news of the sinking of the Titanic. In Shoreditch in 1910 two police officers attending a school strike against corporal punishment question a photographer who nervously holds his camera behind his back: a scene captured by a second photographer. When the postman handed me this book, he warned that ‘it’s got some weight’. This is true in every sense. The hundreds of photographs are both informative and haunting. This is a generous collection with a rich visual texture helped by cleaning and restoration of the plates. There are many forms of conservation. This book is the result of years of research and editing. The introduction and commentary inform the reader about the history of photography as well as about London’s and the nation’s history. London: the Great Transformation is itself a significant conservation achievement. Michael Taylor, editorial co-ordinator for Context Nominative determinism Donald Buttress Kenneth Powell, with an introduction by Matthew Saunders, Shaun Tyas, 2022, 232 pages and 263 illustrations, hardback, ISBN 978 1 907730 99 3, £25 It was a lucky chance that in the 1970s Donald Buttress, a founder member of the Victorian Society’s Manchester Group, travelled to Leeds to speak to the new group there, and met Kenneth Powell. With the connection lasting some 50 years, they have now given us an important book commemorating Donald’s life and work. Buttress grew up, trained, worked and taught in Manchester, and was steeped in its Victorian inheritance. From school days onwards he showed considerable draughtsmanship and skill for design. Having acquired huge knowledge of architectural history, his career took off. With a teaching post at the university and a burgeoning practice in the city, his love of medieval architecture led him to early appointments to cathedrals, including Llandaff, Chichester and, later, Westminster Abbey and his move south. I was lucky to encounter Buttress in my early student years in Manchester. Livelier and more colourful than many colleagues, I remember especially the visits made: to his house at Hirnant in Wales, the journey one of continuous and informed commentary on the churches and houses we passed, to Haddenham in Buckinghamshire, the courtyard home of his contemporary, Peter Aldington, and to churches in Manchester which Buttress had repaired, and adapted or extended. He encouraged us to look at vernacular buildings and to design in keeping, and he set us a project for a new house in the country. Ultimately he preferred the solution of one of my fellow students: a considered glass box, to the more hesitant and perhaps feebler designs of the rest of us. Buttress’s boldness is clear in his drawings, which are so beautifully reproduced in this handsome book. His simplified strong block prints, university and National Service posters, sit alongside miraculously realised drawings of Italian churches and medieval architectural fantasies. They mirror his bold approach to the care and development of old buildings. ‘What I have tried to do all my life – to learn about a building, its history and its purpose and yes, of course, to conserve where conservation serves a practical purpose, but to be bold in keeping the building alive and fit for purpose… (to) preserve it for the future where additions will simply become part of its history.’ That view, which comes straight from his Victorian heroes, often set him up against the amenity societies and planners. Perhaps because few of them had his deep knowledge of the history of architecture, and even fewer his design skills, they were wary of his bold proposals. But the chapters in this book which illustrate his new work, from the simple early schemes in the north of England, to later work in rebuilding Tonbridge School Chapel and St Matthew Westminster, are a vindication of his approach. The latter two, shown in detail here, demonstrate Buttress’s command of style and detail, from the overall scheme down to the design of furnishings, memorials and fittings.
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