Sir Lawrence Weaver

Sir Lawrence Weaver (1876–1930) was a British architectural writer and civil servant.

Lawrence Walter William Weaver was born and raised in Bristol. He began his career there as a sales representative at an architectural practice, selling fixtures and fittings. He then became the London representative of Lockerbie and Wilkinson, a firm of ironfounders who made cast-iron ware for the building trade, where he developed an interest in leadwork. In 1905 his articles on leadwork topics began to be published in leading journals such as Country Life, Architectural Review, The Burlington Magazine, and The Art Workers' Quarterly. Over time his articles' subject matter widened to cover all aspects of architecture.

In 1910 Weaver was appointed Architectural Editor of Country Life, writing on contemporary architecture as an 'advocate of the new' and the Arts and Crafts Movement, and subsequently becoming a director. He wrote a large number of articles on country houses and gardens, especially those by Edwin Lutyens, providing a strong counterpoint to his predecessor, Avray Tipping. In 1913 the magazine was described as "the keeper of the architectural conscience of the nation".

From 1916 he became a civil servant during the First World War. In 1919, when he was the Commercial Secretary of the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries, he founded the National Institute of Agricultural Botany. Weaver's career was subsequently supported by the patronage of Lord Arthur Lee, his Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries (1919–21), owner of the Chequers estate and later co-founder of the Courtauld Institute of Art.

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