Ernest George
British architect and artist

Ernest George

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British architect and artist
A.K.A.
Sir George, Ernest George Sir, Ernest, Sir Ernest George
Gender:
Male
Work field:
Birth:
(London)
Death:
(London)
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Biography

Introduction

Sir Ernest George RA (13 Jun 1839–1922) was an English architect, landscape and architectural watercolour painter, and etcher.

Life and work

His London office was once called "The Eton of architects' offices". His pupils included Herbert Baker, Guy Dawber, John Bradshaw Gass, Edwin Lutyens and Ethel Charles.

In the 1870s in partnership with Harold Peto, George designed houses in London for the Cadogan Estate in Chelsea and Kensington, and a number of country houses. 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.

Between 1870 and 1911 George designed several houses with his former pupil, Alfred B. Yeates.

In New Zealand, which he never visited, he designed the Theomin family house Olveston in Dunedin which was built 1904-07.

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.

In the late 19th century, George trained Ethel Charles, the first woman to be elected a member of the Royal Institute of British Architects.

George's residence at 17 Bartholomew St, London Borough of Southwark is commemorated with a Southwark Council blue plaque.

Houses by George & Yeates

1-8 Collingham Gardens
  • 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)
  • Shockerwick House, Bathford, Somerset including wings, lodge and 'The Clock House' (1896)
  • Cawston Manor & Water Tower Cawston, Norfolk (1897)
  • Golders Green Crematorium, London (1902)
  • Eynsham Hall, Oxfordshire (1904–08)
  • Olveston, Dunedin, New Zealand for David Theomin (1903)
  • Ruckley GrangeTong, Shropshire (1904)
  • Bushridge Hall, Godalming, Surrey (1906)
  • Crathorne Hall, North Yorkshire (1906–09)
  • Putteridge Bury, Lilley, Hertfordshire (1911)
  • Royal Academy of Music, London, (1911)
  • Gray, A. Stuart, Edwardian Architecture: A Biographical Dictionary, Wordsworth Editions, London, 1985 p.187

Painting

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