David Roden Buxton

David Roden Buxton FSA (26 February 1910 – 17 November 2003)

Early life and education Buxton was born in 1910 in London to Charles Roden Buxton and Dorothy Frances Buxton (née Jebb). His parents met when they were both students at Cambridge Universit y; his father Charles studied Classics at Trinity College while his mother, Dorothy Jebb, read for a degree in Philosophy and Moral Sciences at Newnham College. They married in 1904 in Cambridge before settling in London. Buxton’s father Charles was a lawyer and a parliamentarian, firstly as a Liberal MP then as a member of the Labour party. Both Charles and Dorothy were members of the Society of Friends, and Dorothy, described as a humanitarian and social activist, co-founded the Save the Children Fund with her sister Eglantyne Jebb.

Career Buxton travelled extensively both for his career and privately. After leaving university he worked in Kenya and Uganda researching locusts, took part in a Natural History Museum expedition to the Ruwenzori Mountains in 1934-35, and, working with the Imperial Institute of Entomology, he discovered a previously unrecorded species of beetles that bear his name. He returned to the Soviet Union on his own in 1928 to undertake a study on medieval architecture, visiting Central and North West Russia, the Volga Region and parts of Ukraine and, in 1932, he travelled to Northern Russia. He learnt Russian, one of the eight foreign languages in which he was proficient. and photographs taken by Buxton during the family’s visit to Russia in 1927 are included in the book Iron Curtain: From Stage to Cold War written by Patrick Wright, a distant cousin.

Private life On 24 September 1939 Buxton married Annelore Gerstl, the stepdaughter of the artist Arnold Gerstl whose pencil drawing of David Roden Buxton is held in Leicester’s German Expressionist Collection. They had a son but divorced in 1948. With his second wife Mary Violet Buxton (married 9 December 1950) he had five children.

Selected publications

Russian Mediaeval Architecture: With an Account of the Transcaucasian Styles and their Influence in the West, Cambridge University Press, 2014 (originally published in 1934), The Wooden Churches of Eastern Europe : An Introductory Survey, Cambridge University Press, 1981, (reissued 1989), Wooden Architecture of Russia : Houses, Fortifications, and Churches, Alexander Opolovnikov and Yelena Opolovnikova, colour photographs by Vadim Gippenreiter, edited and introduced by David Buxton, London : Thames & Hudson, 1989, The Abyssinians, London : Thames & Hudson, 1970, The Early Churches of Rome, Émile Mâle, translated by David Buxton, London : Ernest Benn, 1960 Travels in Ethiopia, London : Lindsay Drummond, 1949 Field Observations on Locusts in Eastern Africa, H. B. Johnston and D. R. Buxton, With plates, London : Anti-Locust Research Centre, 1949 The Christian Antiquities of Northern Ethiopia, Oxford : Society of Antiquaries of London, 1947