William+Butterfield

William Butterfield was born in 1814 in London, England. His parents were strict non-conformists who ran a chemist's shop. He was one of nine children and was educated at a local school. At the age of 16, he was apprenticed to Thomas Arber, a builder in Pimlico, who later became bankrupt. He studied architecture under E. L. Blackburne (1833–1836). From 1838 to 1839, he was an assistant to Harvey Eginton, an architect in Worcester, where he became articled. He established his own architectural practice at Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1840.

In 1842 William Butterfield got involved with the Cambridge Camden Society. He contributed designs to the Society’s journal, The Ecclesiologist. His involvement altered his architectural style. He was an architect who specialised in Gothic Revival because he reinterpreted the original Gothic style in Victorian times. Lots of his buildings were used for religious purposes, although he also designed for colleges and schools.

William Butterfield’s church of the All Saints in Margret st, London was in view of the Henry-Russel Hitchcock building that initiated the High Victorian Gothic era of architecture. It was designed in 1850, the church was completed in 1853, and the church was consecrated in 1859. With a clergy house and a school, it was intended to serve as a model for a larger cathedral they were going to build. The church was red-brick, a material long out of use in London at that time, and patterned with bands of black brick with bands of stone on the spires. The interior was richly decorated with marble and tile.