Butterfield Visit
Patricia Rusling, née Butterfield, with her sons Edward and Nick in the Keble Dining Hall.
On Friday 3 March, we were honoured to welcome into College three descendants of Keble College’s original architect, William Butterfield. Pictured above is his great-great-great granddaughter, Patricia Rusling née Butterfield, with her sons Edward Rusling and Nick Rusling.
During their visit to Keble, the Butterfield family were given a tour of the Dining Hall and Chapel from our Chaplain Revd Fr Max Kramer, including an account of the Chapel’s history and the significance of its architecture.
The Butterfield family were given a tour of the Chapel by Revd Fr Max Kramer
Our Chaplain, Fr Max said: “It was an honour to show the relatives of William Butterfield around their ancestor’s great achievement. On our tour of the Chapel, we explored something of the grandeur of Butterfield’s vision, the sophistication and attention to detail of his work, and some of the eccentricities of his character!”
“We mainly looked at the mosaics and the way in which they present stories from the Hebrew Bible in ways that interacted with 19th Century debates about how to read the Bible, and the controversy around the gift of the Light of the World—the Donor was determined it should hang in Chapel, but Mr Butterfield had other ideas!”
The family also explored the Keble archives
The family also explored the Keble archives with College Archivist, Peter Monteith, and kindly shared a copy of the Butterfield family tree to be added to the Keble collections for future generations.
A subsequent visit on 13 March saw Leslie Butterfield, who had compiled the Butterfield family tree, and his wife, Penny Harris, visit Keble for a tour and lunch in the Keble Dining Hall.
We very much enjoyed welcoming the family and hope to welcome them back again in the future.
