HUNDREDS of ‘extraordinary’ prints of work from a noted architectural draughts-man have been donated to Tavistock’s Oxfam Bookshop.

Tavistock resident, cultural environmentalist and Dartmoor expert Dr Tom Greeves generously donated the prints, which are from his uncle Thomas Affleck Greeves’ book Ruined Cities of the Imagination and Other Drawings.

Thomas Affleck Greeves (1917 - 1997) was an architect who did not build, he always preferred to draw. After a year at the Slade School of Art, he studied architecture at Cambridge and then at the Architectural Association in London. He was a founder member of the Victorian Society and president of the Bedford Park Society and became renowned for his powerful, visionary architectural landscapes.

He created in the imagination extraordinary landscapes, buildings and machines with inspiration from Piranesi to the Victorians to American Skyscrapers.

His work has been published in The Saturday Book, Country Life — with a commentary by John Betjeman — The Architects Journal and The Design of Suburbia by Arthur M Edwards. Other work has been exhibited on six occasions at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition.

In 1994 a book, Ruined Cities of the Imagination and Other Drawings by Thomas Affleck Greeves, was published. It had a limited print-run of just 500 copies and contains 44 pen and ink drawings, with wash or watercolour.

The bookshop has been donated ‘offprints’ from the book; copies of Greeves’ work, which are now on sale. The shop also has a rare copy of the book itself, an uncorrected proof, also donated by Dr Greeves.

This will be on sale in the future, but for now the bookshop would like interested people to be able to see the whole work, as well as having the opportunity to buy individual prints.

Val Sharpe, Oxfam Bookshop manager, said: ‘These prints are quite extraordinary and the decision to give them to the bookshop is a very generous one and we thank Tom and Lis Greeves for thinking of Oxfam.

‘The prints are truly full of imagination and it is really interesting to look at them in detail and try to spot any inspirations such as St Pancras Station in London or our own Royal William Yard. We hope they give people a lot of pleasure.’