Modern Gallery

Crowsteps OP00758

Crowsteps, Tydehams, Newbury, Berkshire, c 1930. Herbert Felton (c 1887-1968), silver gelatin DOP (developing out paper) print. Designed by Thomas S Tait of Sir John Burnet, Tait & Lorne, and built in 1929, Crowsteps is one of the earliest Modernist houses in England. It was clearly inspired by the German architect Peter Behrena's New Ways in Northampton which was built between 1925 and 1926, and Tait was commissioned on the strength of his workers housing for Crittalla's at Silver End in Essex built between 1927 and 1928. Herbert Felton, whose professional reputation owed much to his photography of Modernist architecture, has used a low point of view to take advantage of the reflective qualities of the garden pool to double the mass of the house and fill the portrait-orientated negative. Felton's ability as an architectural photographer was such that he became the first professional photographer to be employed by the National Buildings Record in 1941

© Historic England

Central Library and Town Hall, Birmingham DP180935

Central Library, Paradise Circus, Birmingham, West Midlands. October 2013. General view of John Madin's Brutalist Central Library (now demolished) in context with the cityscape

© Historic England Archive

Architecture, City, Concrete, Modern, Post War, Urban

Stairwell, University of Birmingham AA98_05526

Department of Commerce and Social Science, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, West Midlands. Interior view. Looking up a stairwell towards the domed ceiling in the Department of Commerce and Social Science at Birmingham University. Photographed by Eric de Mare between 1964 and 1980

© Historic England

Ceiling, Dome, Modern, Stair