Crowsteps, Tydehams, Newbury, Berkshire, UK, c.1930 (b/w photo)

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 Behren's New Ways in Northampton which was built between 1925 and 1926, and Tait was commissioned on the strength of his workers' housing for Crittall'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.