He became fascinated by architecture and the history of art, and would cycle into London to visit churches and photograph them using a wooden quarter plate camera.
His degree at the Courtauld suited what he called his butterfly mind: "I was painting, learning photography, and developing what is still a major interest: why the world in general, and buildings in particular, don’t look as they do in pictures and photographs".
At the time Hawksmoor was a little known pupil of Sir Christopher Wren, and his Christ Church, Spitalfields had been left to rot.
[1] The importance of this first book, Hawksmoor, was recognised by the award of the Society of Architectural Historians (GB) Alice Davis Hitchcock medallion in 1961.
In addition to his career at Reading, Downes was a commissioner with the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England (1981–93); Visiting Lecturer Yale University 1968; Honorary Visiting Professor University of York from 1994; President (1984–88) and Honorary Patron (2017) of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain (1984–88).
His fellow historian James Stevens Curl has written, "Downes's productivity seems to contradict his claim that procrastination is one of his recreations".
[6] Downes married Margaret Walton, a music librarian with a contralto voice in 1962; they remained a devoted couple until her death in 2003.