The East Prospect of St Edmunds-Bury by Samuel and Nathaniel Buck

Code: 54074

Date: 1741

1st edition. Copper engraving original  uncoloured as issued. Overall size : 82.2cms.x 31.7cms.approx.  Image size :  783mm x 302mm. including text.  Centre fold as issued. . Annotated with a key, it shows the principal features of the seaside town, including a finely delineated view of the port against a background of  houses and buildings.  Three repaired nicks near bottom centrefold in margin, very slight ; faint remnants of old fold on right hand side else very good condition indeed. ‘The view of Bury, a resort of polite society in the Bucks’ day, is taken from what are now the playing fields of St James’s Middle School.  The Bucks no doubt selected this view point with the interests of their antiquarian clientele in mind.  The walled area in the mid-distance had enclosed the monastic vineyard.  Beyond it flows the River Lark, joined at the centre of the image by the River Linnet.  Beyond that are the Abbey fishponds, known as the Crankles. The site of the fishponds is now occupied by swings and roundabouts.  beyond the fishponds are the remains of the Abbey: the High Altar, the Great Court (now the Abbey Gardens). and the Abbot’s Palace can all be identified.  The dovecote survives tidat’. A Propect of Britain by Ralph Hyde 1994.

Samuel Buck and his younger brother Nathaniel, were topographical artists and engravers who, from about 1720 to 1753 toured England and Wales recording the architectural antiquities of both countries.  Prior to Bucks' magnificent copper plate panoramas, virtually nothing had been done to depict views of significant English cities and towns. Only a handful were included in the atlas by Braun and Hogenberg in their Civitates Orbis Terrurum published in Cologne in 1581.
The Buck brothers produced a series of panoramic views of the "cities, seaports and capital towns" and by doing so, created a valuable record of what English and Welsh towns and cites looked like before the onset of the Industrial Revolution.
In all, the two brothers produced 423 engravings of monasteries, abbeys, castles and other ruins and 87 panoramic prospects of towns and cities which taken altogether, may be regarded as one of the most important documentary projects of the 18th.Century.   Indeed Ralph Hyde declares that,'the Buck peregrinations were uncomfortable, dangerous and exhausting.  In such conditions, their persistence and single-mindedness in pursuing their systematic recording of England and Wales year after year until the task was complete and their goal accomplished is downright heroic' (The Town Panoramas of Samuel and Nathaniel Buck).