William Bidlake Explained

William Henry Bidlake
Honorific Suffix:MA, FRIBA
Birth Date:12 May 1861
Birth Place:Wolverhampton, England
Death Place:Wadhurst, Sussex, England

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 German: [[Das englische Haus]] (The English House), which was to prove influential on the early Modern Movement in Germany.

Life and career

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. In 1882 he moved to London where he studied at the Royal Academy Schools and worked for Gothic Revival architects Bodley and Garner. 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 Bidlake settled in Birmingham where he set up in independent practice and, from 1893, pioneered the teaching of architecture 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.

He was an associate, member, treasurer and then, from 1902 - 38, Professor of Architecture of the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists.[1]

In 1924, Bidlake 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.[2]

Major built works

Sources

Notes and References

  1. Web site: William Henry Bidlake MA, FRIBA. Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland 1851-1951. University of Glasgow. 14 September 2013.
  2. https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1076218?section=official-list-entry "MORTUARY CHAPEL AT HANDSWORTH CEMETERY"
  3. The Buildings of England: Worcestershire, Nikolaus Pevsner, 1968 p268
  4. The Buildings of England: Worcestershire, Nikolaus Pevsner, 1968 p338

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