These drawings by William Butterfield for the Church of St. Matthias in Stoke Newington, London, serve as an example of nineteenth-century contract drawings, which were usually accompanied by specifications that established the materials, processes, and order of construction. Such drawings served as legal documents, attesting to the agreed-upon scheme and against which the completed work might be verified. In place of signatures these drawings bear the labels and seals of the funding agencies: the Church Commissioners Office and the Encorporated Society for Promoting the Enlargement, Building and Repairing of Churches and Chapels. The texts of these labels instruct the architect to follow explicitly the plans as drawn. Changes could only be undertaken with written permission. These drawings were very likely part of Butterfield’s own set as they are not signed by the architect himself.

William Butterfield (1814-1900) was a British architect associated with the Oxford Movement. The CCA’s collection of nineteenth-century British architecture includes works by, among many others, Charles Barry, Gertrude Jekyll and Edwin Landseer Lutyens, Augustus Charles and Augustus Welby Pugin, Alfred Waterhouse, and the Wyatt family.