Butterfield's church of All Saints, Margaret Street, London, was, in the view of Henry-Russell Hitchcock, the building that initiated the High Victorian Gothic era.

[1] Flanked by a clergy house and school, it was intended as a "model" church by its sponsors, the Ecclesiological Society.

[1] In 1849, just before Butterfield designed the church, John Ruskin had published his Seven Lamps of Architecture, in which he had urged the study of Italian Gothic and the use of polychromy.

Many contemporaries perceived All Saints' as Italian in character, though in fact it combines fourteenth century English details, with a German-style spire.

At St Bartholomew's, Yealmpton in the same year, Butterfield used a considerable amount of marquetry work for the interior, and built striped piers, using two colours of marble.

[1] At Oxford, Butterfield designed Keble College, in a style radically divergent from the university's existing traditions of Gothic architecture, its walls boldly striped with various colours of brick.