Ernest George

For the Welsh rugby union player, see Ernie George. For the Australian footballer, see Ernie George (Australian footballer).

Sir Ernest George RA (13 June 1839 – 8 December 1922) was a British architect, landscape and architectural watercolourist, and etcher.

George in 1919

Life and work

Born in London, Ernest George began his architectural training in 1856, under Samuel Hewitt, coupled with studies at the Royal Academy Schools 1857–59. After a short period in the office of Allen Boulnois, he went on a sketching tour of France and Germany, which inspired him to the architectural style that would make him famous.^[1]

On his return to London, he set up an architectural practice in 1861 with Thomas Vaughan.^[2] They had their breakthrough in 1869, when George was contacted by the tea and spice importer and Member of Parliament Henry Peek (son of James Peek, who started the biscuit business Peak Frean & Co). He was about to buy the village of Rousdon in Devon, and wanted George to build him a large mansion house south of the village, plus several other buildings.^[1] This complex became eventually known as the Rousdon Estate, and from 1930 to 1998 the George-designed mansion house served as the private boarding school Allhallows College.

Vaughan suddenly died on 2 March 1875 aged 39, forcing George to find another partner.^[3] He chose the young Harold Peto, mainly because of the Peto family's vast contact network in the building industry. During this partnership, George designed houses in London for the Cadogan Estate in Chelsea and Kensington. In 1881 they designed Stoodleigh Court at Tiverton for Thomas Carew. In 1891 they designed an extension to West Dean House for William James, creating the Oak Room, now Oak Hall, in West Dean College.

In 1891, Harold Peto decided to leave London for health reasons, and to devote more time to his interests in garden design, at which point George made a former pupil, Alfred Bowman Yeates, his new partner.

In New Zealand, which he never visited, he designed the Theomin family house Olveston, in Dunedin, which was built in 1904–07.^[4]

He was also responsible for the current Southwark Bridge (1921), and the Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice in London's Postman's Park.

He served as president of the Royal Institute of British Architects from 1908 to 1910.

Ernest George's London office was nicknamed "The Eton of architects",^[2][5] and the 79 pupils included Herbert Baker, Guy Dawber, John Bradshaw Gass, Edwin Lutyens and Ethel Charles. Ethel Charles was the first woman to be elected a member of the Royal Institute of British Architects.^[6]

George died in London at 71 Palace Court, Bayswater, in 1922, aged 83, and was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium, of which he and Alfred Yeates had been the architects,^[7] and where the Ernest George Columbarium is named for him.

George's residence at 17 Bartholomew Street, London Borough of Southwark, is commemorated with a Southwark Council blue plaque.^[8]

1–8 Collingham Gardens

Buildings by Ernest George

Ossington Coffee House, Newark on Trent

• Rousdon House (for Sir Henry Peek of Peek Freans; became Allhallows School in 1938) Rousdon, Devon (1870)
• 1–8 Collingham Gardens, Earls Court, London (1881–84)
• Shiplake College, Henley-on-Thames, 1890
• 4 & 6 Thornlaw Road, West Norwood, London (1882)
• Ossington Coffee Tavern, Newark on Trent (1882)^[9]
• Shockerwick House, Bathford, Somerset, including wings, lodge and "The Clock House" (1896)
• Cawston Manor Water Tower Cawston, Norfolk (1897) designed further by architect John Bennett RIBA of Southwold into residence for David & Jennifer Forster.
• Golders Green Crematorium, London (1902)
• Eynsham Hall, Oxfordshire (1904–08)
• Olveston, Dunedin, New Zealand, for David Theomin (1903)
• Ruckley Grange, Tong, Shropshire (1904)^[10]
• Bushridge Hall, Godalming, Surrey (1906)
• Crathorne Hall, North Yorkshire (1906–09)
• Putteridge Bury, Lilley, Hertfordshire (1911)
• Royal Academy of Music, London (1911)^[11]

Painting

1886 watercolour of Fleet Street by George, from a contemporary print

• George painted in England, Belgium, Holland, France, Germany and Italy.^[12]
• An album with pencil-sketches of townscapes in Ostend, Belgium, is kept in the Kunstmuseum aan Zee there ^[13]

Further reading

• Grainger, H. (1985). The Architecture of Sir Ernest George and his partners [Ph. D. thesis, University of Leeds] (1985)
• Grainger, Hilary J. (2011). The Architecture of Sir Ernest George. Reading: Spire Books. ISBN 978-1-904965-31-2.

References

1. "The Architecture of Sir Ernest George", Times Higher Education, 7 July 2011. Linked 2017-02-06
2. Allen, Janet (6 February 2017). "The Architecture of Sir Ernest George: Book Review". The Lutyens Trust.
3. H.J. Grainger, The Architecture of Sir Ernest George (Reading: Spire Books, 2011), p. 67.
4. M. Blackman, Dorothy Theomin of Olveston (The Friends of Olveston, Dunedin, NZ: 2007) ISBN 978-0-473-11564-7, pp. 17–19.
5. Gray, A. Stuart (1985). Edwardian Architecture: A Biographical Dictionary. London: Wordsworth Editions. p. 186. ISBN 0-7156-2141-6.
6. Lynne Walker, "Golden Age or False Dawn? Women Architects in the Early 20th century", English-heritage.org. Retrieved 18 March 2012.
7. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Volume 21. Oxford University Press. 2004. p. 914. ISBN 0-19-861371-7.
8. "Sir Ernest George". Retrieved 14 August 2012.
9. Pevsner, Nikolaus; Williamson, Elizabeth; Hartwell, Clare (2020). The Buildings of England. Nottinghamshire. Yale University Press. p. 368. ISBN 9780300247831.
10. "Welcome to Discovering Shropshire's History". Archived from the original on 26 March 2012. Retrieved 7 September 2011.
11. Gray, Edwardian Architecture: A Biographical Dictionary (1985), p. 187.
12. Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1922). "George, Sir Ernest" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 31 (12th ed.). London & New York: The Encyclopædia Britannica Company. p. 219.
13. N. Hostyn, Een album met Oostendse schetsen van Sir Ernest George. Een uitzonderlijk iconografisch document voor Oostende, [Ostend] [Kon. Oostendse Heem- en Geschiedkundige Kring De Plate], [2008].

External links

• The Lychgate, West Wickham Church (1864 watercolour)
• Ghent, Canal Scene (etching, c. 1880)
• San Gimignano (1882 watercolour)
• The Rousdon Estate website