A founding member of the Victorian Society, defending Victorian architecture, he began his career as a journalist and writer of the Shell Guides to different counties of England and is credited with saving Walsingham Place in Truro, designed by Philip Sambell, from demolition.

His most important publications include:-
‘Mount Zion’ (1931);
‘Continual Dew, a Little Book of Bourgeois Verse’ (1937);
‘New Bats in Old Belfries’ (1945);
‘A Few Late Chrysanthemums’ (1954);
‘Poems in the Porch’ (1954);
‘Collected Poems’ (1958);
‘Summoned by Bells’ (1960);
‘A Ring of Bells’ (1962); and
‘Church Poems’ (1981)