When I first started researching the work of the Edwardian architect Horace Field(1861–1948), I soon realised that this was a man whose achievementscould best be measured in terms quite antithetical to those conventionally usedby architectural historians. Nearly all buildings are judged on the basis oftheir originality; and, if they are old, on the basis of their influence ortheir relationship to what subsequently became a significant direction in thearts or culture of their time. Even in a field such as the history of Victorianand Edwardian architecture, transformed by Mark Girouard and Alistair Serviceforty or more years ago, a story has only been worth telling when it is a story.If a collection of buildings adds up to very little, what then?Field's buildings are mostly incidental to other more interesting,more imaginative stories. Was he a failure, then, in designing buildings whichfail to appear in their own right as part of a critical canon? Was he a failuretoo, in that his career started so promisingly and tailed away to nothing; thathe was tucked away in rural Sussex, in Rye, fiddling about with old buildingsand designing garages and cheap villas, while other architects of his generationspent their final years on some of the most enthralling projects of their lives?Or does the story of Field's career suggest that there are other waysto evaluate an architectural career than to tell the story of itsconventionally-defined successes?