
Regent Street, London - One of Reginald Blomfield's most noticeable projects
Sir 'Reginald Theodore Blomfield' (
20 December 1856 –
27 December 1942) was a
British architect,
garden designer and
author.
Reginald Blomfield was born in Nymet Tracey, Devon, son of the local clergyman. He was educated at
Haileybury school and at Exeter College, Oxford. His uncle, Sir Arthur Blomfield, was an architect and Blomfield followed him into the profession, training first under his uncle, then at the
Royal Academy in London, where he later (1906) became Professor of Architecture.
After establishing his own practice, he designed the
Menin Gate Memorial in
Ypres,
Flanders, the Pall Mall premises of the
Carlton Club destroyed in World War 2 (rather than the current premises in St James's Street),
Lambeth Bridge, works at
Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford,
Highgate School and
Goldsmiths College. He became known for remodelling streets in the early
20th Century such as
Regent Street in
London in the
1920s [1] and
The Headrow in
Leeds from 1929. These are notable for being constructed in a uniform architectural style, and
Pevsner comments on the similarity of the Leeds scheme to the earlier one in Regent Street.
In 1913 he was awarded the Gold Medal of the
Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and was elected to the Royal Academy in 1914.
References
Riddington, Peter and others, ''Regent Street, History and Conservation''. Donald Insall Associates, London 2001.
Notes
1. As well as Blomfield, other architects working on Regent Street in the first decades of the twentieth century included Norman Shaw, Aston Webb, John James Burnet, Arthur Joseph Davis, Henry Tanner, and Ernest Newton.
External links
★ http://www.gardenvisit.com/b/blomfield.htm
★ http://www.veteransagency.mod.uk/remembrance/remembrance_blomfield.htm