David Roden Buxton

Background

Buxton was born on February 26, 1910, in London, England.

Education

Buxton's first love was entomology, which he studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, earning a Bachelor's Degree in 1931 and a Master's Degree in 1936.

Career

Buxton's interests ranged from insects to photography, but he is most often remembered for his research and writings on Christian churches and other historical architecture around the world. During the 1930's he traveled to East Africa with the Imperial Institute of Entomology and discovered several new species of beetles. In 1937, he joined the British Colonial Service and was assigned to Nigeria, where he worked to suppress the breeding of disease-carrying tsetse flies; he also worked as an education officer in Sierra Leone.

From 1942 to 1949, Buxton spent a rewarding period studying the Christian culture of Ethiopia and discovering its ancient churches; he even helped preserve one of these structures in Debra Damo. While in Ethiopia, Buxton left the Colonial Service to join the British Council as an education worker. His experiences in Ethiopia are related in his 1949 book, Travels in Ethiopia; and he later returned to the subject of Ethiopia in The Abyssinians.

After leaving Africa, Buxton traveled on various British Council assignments in Europe, where he visited old churches and wrote about them in his books. Having already published a work on architecture in his Russian Medieval Architecture, he would go on to publish two more during his career, including Russian Medieval Architecture: With an Account of the Transcaucasian Styles and Their Influence in the West and The Wooden Churches of Eastern Europe: An Introductory Survey. Fluent in several languages, Buxton also translated Emile Male's The Early Churches of Rome and edited Alexander Opolovnikov and Yelena Opolovnikova's Wooden Architecture of Russia: Houses, Fortifications, and Churches.

Achievements

• Buxton is best known for his books on Russian architecture, the ancient churches of Ethiopia, and the wooden churches of Eastern Europe. A collection of his papers and photographs relating to Russian and Eastern European architecture is held by Cambridge University Library.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Wooden Churches of Eastern Europe

    (Previously issued in 1981, this book examines the wooden ...)

    1981
  • Russian Mediaeval Architecture with an Account of the Transcaucasian Styles and Their Influence on the West
  • Travels in Ethiopia
  • The Christian Antiquities of Northern Ethiopia

References

• Contemporary Authors Volume 221
  2004