Small garages and service stations are a vital – but fast disappearing – part of Britain’s automotive landscape. Often independently owned and sited in idiosyncratic buildings, they are rightfully celebrated and sensitively documented in this essential book. You might use a local garage to change a tyre or replace your exhaust, but when was the last time you pulled over and took a good look at the building itself? In the spirit of Ed Ruscha’s Twentysix Gasoline Stations (1963), photographer Philip Butler has done just that. Over six years, he’s travelled the length and breadth of Britain photographing these diverse, eccentric and idiosyncratic buildings. As motoring became popular in the early 1900s, the need for mechanical expertise to service, repair, refuel, and sell vehicles soared – and the ‘garage’ was born. From the Mock-Tudor fad of the 1920s via the Streamline Moderne of the 1930s, to the simple Modernist rationalism of postwar Britain, each era has produced a distinct automotive architecture. With the introduction of the Ministry of Transport (MOT) vehicle test in the 1960s, demand accelerated still further. A diverse array of structures was utilised – churches, cinemas, railway arches, fire stations, shops, factories – all proved versatile enough to find second lives as garages. As the era of the combustion engine draws to a close, Butler’s enchanting photographs of 226 Garages and Service Stations document the charm and personality of these survivors of the petrol age.
