Collection: Edifice Collection

Description

The collection contains about 33,000 photographic colour transparency 35mm slides compiled by Gillian Darley and Philippa Lewis between about 1980 and 2010. The slides show architectural details, buildings and gardens throughout the British Isles.

'Edifice' was a commercial picture library specialising in images of the exteriors of buildings all over the world and this collection contains the slides representing very diverse architectural subjects in the UK and Ireland.

The collection is arranged into themes within 5 main categories: details (such as doors and windows); materials (such as stone and aluminium); types of non-domestic structure (such as banks and hotels); domestic periods (such as Georgian or Interwar); types of domestic structures (such as manor houses and viarages); architects (by name); general themes (such as advertising and demolition); garden themes (such as fountains and vegetable gardens); and building styles (such as Jacobean and Art Deco).

A legacy catalogue is available which lists details of each of the slides. A companion handlist is also available which says where the slide can be physically found. The theme associated with the slide in the catalogue can be matched with the themes given on the collection handlist. The handlist provides the number of the box and slide sheet in which the slide can be found. The catalogue is not perfectly accurate: the migration of the data from an earlier system and losses during the collection's commercial use may explain gaps and absences.

A handlist is available.

Archival History

The collection was acquired by The English Heritage Archive in 2015.

Content