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William Bidlake

William Henry Bidlake MA, FRIBA (12 May 1861 – 6 April 1938) was a British architect, a leading figure of the Arts and Crafts movement in Birmingham and Director of the School of Architecture at Birmingham School of Art from 1919 until 1924.

Several of Bidlake's houses in the Birmingham area were featured in Hermann Muthesius's book (The English House), which was to prove influential on the early Modern Movement in Germany.

Personal life

Bidlake was born in Wolverhampton, the son of local architect George Bidlake (1830–1892) from whom he received his earliest architectural training. He attended Tettenhall College and Christ's College, Cambridge, gaining his MA in 1881. In 1924, He married a woman over twenty years younger than himself and moved to Wadhurst in East Sussex, where he continued to practise until his death.

Bidlake died in 1938 and is buried in an unmarked grave in Handsworth Cemetery, Birmingham. In 1909 he had designed the cemetery's chapel, which became a Grade I listed building in 1982.

Career

In 1882 Bidlake moved to London where he studied at the Royal Academy Schools and worked for Colonel Edis, F.S.A., and Gothic Revival architects Bodley and Garner. He then worked as an assistant to Robert Rowand Anderson, L.L.D, in Edinburgh. In 1885 he won the RIBA Pugin Travelling Fellowship for his draughtsmanship, which enabled him to spend 1886 travelling in Italy. On returning to England in 1887 he settled in Birmingham where he set up in independent practice at 37 Waterloo Street. From 1893, he pioneered the teaching of architecture as a lecturer at the Birmingham School of Art. Famously ambidextrous, his party trick was to sketch with both hands simultaneously.

Bidlake designed many Arts and Crafts-influenced houses in upmarket Birmingham districts such as Edgbaston, Moseley, and Four Oaks (the latter then in Warwickshire and absorbed into Birmingham in 1974), along with a series of more Gothic-influenced churches such as St Agatha's, Sparkbrook – generally considered his masterpiece.

Institutions and awards

Bidlake was awarded as a Silver Medallist in 1883. He became an Associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects (A.R.I.B.A.) in 1881. He was an associate, member, treasurer and then, from 1902 to 1938, Professor of Architecture of the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists. He was president of the Birmingham Architectural Association in 1899 and 1900.

Major built works

References

Sources

  • Foster, Andy. Pevsner Architectural Guides: Birmingham. Yale University Press: New Haven & London, 2005
  • Crawford, Alan (ed.). By Hammer and Hand: The Arts and Crafts Movement in Birmingham. Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery, 1984
  • Mitchell, Trevor. Birmingham's Victorian and Edwardian Architects Phillada Ballard. ed. Oblong, 2009 . http://www.victoriansociety.org.uk/news/new-book-celebrates-birminghams-victorian-and-edwardian-architects/ .