William Butterfield (1814-1900) was one of the greatest of High Victorian church architects. He’s also been much appreciated by later practising architects: the postwar Brutalists, like Peter and Alison Smithson, made him one of their heroes. He was an unusual, difficult man. He lived alone, had friends but not many, was remote from the assistants in his office. He walked every day to the Athenaeum for a ‘dish of tea’. He took few pupils (but they included Henry Woodyer and Halsey Ricardo). He would have nothing to do with competitions. He refused to take W.R. Lethaby as a pupil because Lethaby mentioned in his interview that he had had something to do with a competition. He wrote boiling reactionary letters to the High Church newspaper, the Guardian, and pasted them into a book. A friend who was allowed to borrow some drawings and kept them a few days too long received an angry letter.

Yet he was a very great architect. His use of constructional polychromy – patterns of red, blue, and cream bricks – is famous and for some off-putting, so perhaps it’s best to start a judgement elsewhere. All Saints Margaret Street, built as a model contemporary church by the Ecclesiological Society, has convincing proportions and plan quite different from mediaeval Gothic: very tall arcades with wide bays, and short chancel, so the congregation can see the priest.

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