all saints, margaret st., london

this church in the centre of the west end is nearly always open, in great nick inside after restoration, and almost impossible to walk past whenever I'm nearby. butterfield's best known church is hard edged muscular gothic built 1849-59, radical for its structural polychromy and its branching out into a truly victorian gothic rather than being a copy of the past. in front various ancillary buildings cluster protectively around the courtyard to the south of this battlecry of a church, with one or two outliers over the road making this a tractarian stronghold at which worshipped the brotherhood of the engagement, which included w.e.gladstone, baron coleridge, the aclands and butterfield himself of course.