Harold Chalton Bradshaw – A Postscript

Publication in the last issue of a note concerning the architect Harold Bradshaw
has produced a postscript from Charles Hind, H.J. Heinz Curator of Drawings at
the RIBA. (Updated with new location information 2023)

Bradshaw was a brilliant draughtsman and the drawings he made as a Rome Scholar at the British School at Rome are now part of School’s Special Collections. Until the 1970s they had hung in the School’s London offices; afterwards, they were kept for a few years at the V&A and then deposited at RIBA before being sent back to Rome in 2019. Illustrated is a bird’s eye view of his proposed restoration of Praeneste, the complex of Roman temples dedicated to Fortuna Primigenia partly covered today by the town of Palestrina and about 35 km east of Rome. Chalton was far from being the first architect fascinated by the ruins and they had supplied Andrea Palladio with rich materials for his own conjectural restorations,  the drawings for which are in the Burlington-Devonshire Collection in the RIBA.  Curiously, Bradshaw’s opinion of what the ancient complex had looked like differed considerably from Palladio’s!