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Over the past 20 years many Conservation Officers have pilgrimaged to the Surrey home of Charles Brooking to view his collection of architectural detail, stored in a series of garden sheds. Now fully catalogued and rehoused at the University of Greenwich, the Brooking Collection is coming into its own as a unique resource for the conservation professional.
Thirty years ago Charles Brooking,
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an inveterate schoolboy collector, took the decision to concentrate his collecting efforts on the single subject of architectural details. Initially he was motivated by a fascination with the designs of the pieces which he ‘rescued’. (No item is added to the Collection unless it is threatened by demolition or has already been removed.) As the Collection has grown over the years the collecting has
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become a highly focused exercise with the aim of documenting as comprehensively as possible the evolution of the window, door, fanlight, staircase, firegrate, rainwater head and timber moulding. With the growth of the Collection there has developed an underpinning philosophy. “Part of my aim”, states Charles, “is to preserve the modest everyday features, the very features ignored by museums and
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CONTEXT 50
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