The Waterhouse Collection of the RIBA and the Working of a Nineteenth-Century Office

The RIBA's Waterhouse Collection can now be consulted in the RIBA Study Room at the Victoria and Albert Museum, having been transferred there from Portman Square, along with the rest of the RIBA Drawings Collection. This transfer has been of particular significance for Waterhouse's work since, in fact, it has opened up the possibility of fully consulting his drawings and archive for the very first time. With well over nine thousand drawings, representing over one hundred and sixty commissions, this forms a substantial collection, indeed one of the largest single holdings of the RIBA Drawings Collection. By a strange twist of historical circumstances, the catalogue for this collection has been completed at virtually the same time as the collection has, at last, become available to scholars. It therefore seems apposite to draw together a series of observations on this collection and its catalogue, and on how the two together can inform our understanding of the workings of a particular Victorian architect's office, and indeed, to some degree, of the ways in which Victorian architects more generally may have worked.