Raymond Erith

Raymond Charles Erith RA FRIBA (7 August 1904 – 30 November 1973) was a leading classical architect in England during the period dominated by the modern movement after the Second World War. His work demonstrates his continual interest in expanding the classical tradition to establish a progressive modern architecture, drawing on the past.

Erith was appointed architect for the reconstruction of Downing Street (1958), elected a Royal Academician (1959) and served on the Royal Fine Art Commission (1960–73). Since his death, exhibitions of his work have been held by the Royal Academy of Arts (1976), Gainsborough's House, Sudbury (1979), Niall Hobhouse (1986) and Sir John Soane’s Museum (2004).

Raymond Erith was born in London, eldest son of Charles Erith, a mechanical engineer and his wife May. At the age of four he contracted tuberculosis, which led to twelve years of intermittent illness and left him permanently lame. He trained at the Architectural Association (1921–26) and worked for Morley Horder and Verner Rees before setting up his own practice in London in 1928. From 1929–39 he was in partnership with Bertram Hume, with whom he won an international competition for replanning the Lower Norrmalm area of (1934).

In 1934 he married Pamela, younger daughter of Arthur and Elsie Spencer Jackson, who had also qualified at the AA. They had four daughters. In 1936 they moved to Dedham, Essex. Among Erith's early commissions were Great House, Dedham (1937) and gates, lodges and cottages in Windsor Great Park for King George VI (1939). As a young man he looked back to the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to pick up the thread of tradition while it was still unbroken and carry it forward from there. This led him to John Soane, an important influence on his early designs but later he turned to earlier sources of inspiration and especially to Palladio and the robust practicality of his farmhouse villas.

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