Sir Arthur William Blomfield (1829-1899)

Born the son of the Bishop of London he became a prolific church architect. He was articled to the architect Phillip Charles Hardwick from 1852 to 55. He was the architect for the rebuilding of Palace House, Buealieu from 1871 to 1874 and designed the chapel at Tyntesfield from 1873 to 1875.

He was the president of the Architectural Association in 1861 and was elected FRIBA in 1867. He was elected the vice president of RIBA in 1886 and was knighted in 1889.

Some of his designs for furniture and metalwork were published in Charles Locke Eastlake’s 1868 influential publication Hints on Household Taste

Plate No 30, Hints on Household Taste By Charles Locke Eastlake, 1868. Showing a design By Sir Arthur William Blomfield.

On the death of George Edmund Street in 1881 he was employed to complete the unfinished Law Courts on the strand, arguably Street’s most important commission.

He was the uncle to the architect Sir Reginald Blomfield, who was his pupil from 1881 and later started his own practice and was a founding member of the short lived workshop Kenton & Co with Ernest Gimson, Sidney Barnsley, Mervyn Macartney, William Lethaby and Colonel Mallet

from
Charles L. Eastlake, Hints on Household Taste, 1868 
Richard A. Fellows, Sir Reginald Blomfield, Edwardian Architect, 1985