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George Blair Imrie (1885–1952) was an English architect of the
Arts and Crafts movement renowned for his sensitive and individual house designs.
Imrie was born in
Virginia Water
Virginia Water is a commuter village in the Borough of Runnymede in northern Surrey, England. It is home to the Wentworth Estate and the Wentworth Club. The area has much woodland and occupies a large minority of the Runnymede district. Its n ...
,
Surrey in 1885, lived for many years in Esher with his wife, Helen Maud Harrison, whom he married in 1910, and died in
Salisbury
Salisbury ( ) is a cathedral city in Wiltshire, England with a population of 41,820, at the confluence of the rivers Avon, Nadder and Bourne. The city is approximately from Southampton and from Bath.
Salisbury is in the southeast of ...
,
Wiltshire
Wiltshire (; abbreviated Wilts) is a historic and ceremonial county in South West England with an area of . It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset to the southwest, Somerset to the west, Hampshire to the southeast, Gloucestershire ...
in 1952. His parents were James Blair Imrie, clerk of works (who had been born in Edinburgh) and Alice Stallwood. (He is not the son of architect, surveyor and civil engineer, Benjamin B. Imrie of
Castle Douglas
Castle Douglas ( gd, Caisteal Dhùghlais) is a town in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland. It lies in the lieutenancy area of Kirkcudbrightshire, in the eastern part of Galloway, between the towns of Dalbeattie and Gatehouse of Fleet. It is in th ...
, Kirkcudbrightshire, Scotland as was once thought.)
He is considered a proponent of the style now known as "
Tudorbethan
Tudor Revival architecture (also known as mock Tudor in the UK) first manifested itself in domestic architecture in the United Kingdom in the latter half of the 19th century. Based on revival of aspects that were perceived as Tudor architecture ...
", along with architects such
Norman Shaw
Richard Norman Shaw RA (7 May 1831 – 17 November 1912), also known as Norman Shaw, was a British architect who worked from the 1870s to the 1900s, known for his country houses and for commercial buildings. He is considered to be among the g ...
,
George Devey
George Devey (1820, London – 1886, Hastings, Sussex) was an English architect notable for his work on country houses and their estates, especially those belonging to the Rothschild family. The second son of Frederick and Ann Devey, he was bo ...
,
Baillie Scott,
Edwin Lutyens and the designer
William Morris
William Morris (24 March 1834 – 3 October 1896) was a British textile designer, poet, artist, novelist, architectural conservationist, printer, translator and socialist activist associated with the British Arts and Crafts Movement. He ...
. His houses are renowned for their use of quality materials such as hand-made tiles and leaded lights, oak window frames and doors with wrought iron fittings yet often remain relatively modestly proportioned and low-key rather than showy and grand. Even at the time this "liveability" was noted; the 1924 book ''Small Family Houses'' by R. Randall Phillips mentions an Imrie and Angell house in
Byfleet
Byfleet is a village in Surrey, England. It is located in the far east of the borough of Woking, around east of West Byfleet, from which it is separated by the M25 motorway and the Wey Navigation.
The village is of medieval origin. Its win ...
, Surrey. The aim of this book was "to bring together a collection of houses suited to the needs of the small family. It is difficult to define just what accommodation may properly be embraced by such a term, but in a general way it has been taken to mean a house with two living-rooms on the ground floor and four or five bedrooms on the first floor." Many of Imrie's houses included state-of-the-art comforts of the time such as electricity in every room and "fitted-lavatory basins" with both hot and cold running water in all the bedrooms.
His architectural practice, Imrie and Angell, was based at 2 Mitre Court Chambers in London with Thomas Gravely Angell. Prior to that he had been in partnership with E. H. Stodart and W. G. Pine-Coffin at Thanet House on the
Strand
Strand may refer to:
Topography
*The flat area of land bordering a body of water, a:
** Beach
** Shoreline
* Strand swamp, a type of swamp habitat in Florida
Places Africa
* Strand, Western Cape, a seaside town in South Africa
* Strand Street ...
and at
Chipstead, Surrey, as architects, surveyors, land agents and valuers.
Much of his work was in Surrey, most notably the fine Arts and Crafts houses of Clive Road and Clair Hill in
Esher
Esher ( ) is a town in Surrey, England, to the east of the River Mole.
Esher is an outlying suburb of London near the London-Surrey Border, and with Esher Commons at its southern end, the town marks one limit of the Greater London Built-Up ...
, built in the 1920s. His other houses include:
* a converted barn moved from Sussex to Reigate Road,
Leatherhead
Leatherhead is a town in the Mole Valley District of Surrey, England, about south of Central London. The settlement grew up beside a ford on the River Mole, from which its name is thought to derive. During the late Anglo-Saxon period, Leathe ...
in 1921;
* 85
Avenue Road
Avenue Road is a major north–south street in Toronto, Ontario. The road is a continuation of University Avenue, linked to it via Queen's Park and Queen's Park Crescent East and West to form a single through route.''Toronto Pocket Street Atla ...
,
St John's Wood
St John's Wood is a district in the City of Westminster, London, lying 2.5 miles (4 km) northwest of Charing Cross. Traditionally the northern part of the ancient parish and Metropolitan Borough of Marylebone, it extends east to west from ...
(1937);
* the Arts and Crafts gardens at
Tusmore House in Oxfordshire;
* the 1920s extension of Upper Terrace Lodge at
Hampstead Heath; and
* a house in
Chilmark, Wiltshire, 1936.
(A 1968 addition to the latter house was done by Warminster-based architects, Imrie, Porter and Wakefield, who practised mainly from the 1960s through to 1984. The firm's archive is held in the Wiltshire and Swindon Archives and includes G B Imrie's professional accounts books 1914-1937; G B Imrie's Petty Cash book 1937-1942; G B Imrie's Letters to the Times 1943-44, among others. Since Blair Imrie died in Salisbury in 1952, this firm may well have been his last professional partnership, which continued to use his name after his death. Another possibility is that a son or daughter continued in the practise.)
His firm, Imrie and Angell, was also involved in with the development from 1912 to the late 1920s of of land on St George's Hill,
Weybridge
Weybridge () is a town in the Borough of Elmbridge in Surrey, England, around southwest of central London. The settlement is recorded as ''Waigebrugge'' and ''Weibrugge'' in the 7th century and the name derives from a crossing point of the ...
, into a private estate intended for wealthy businessmen, centred on a golf course.
Most notably among his non-residential work, Imrie's architectural practice won the competition to design the main building for the
Royal Horticultural Society
The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), founded in 1804 as the Horticultural Society of London, is the UK's leading gardening charity.
The RHS promotes horticulture through its five gardens at Wisley (Surrey), Hyde Hall (Essex), Harlow Carr (Nor ...
's garden at
Wisley
__NOTOC__
Wisley is a village and civil parish in Surrey, England between Cobham and Woking, in the Borough of Guildford. It is the home of the Royal Horticultural Society's Wisley Garden. The River Wey runs through the village and Ockham and ...
which was designed in 1914 and completed in 1916. The purpose-built, half-timbered, Surrey-style building known as the Laboratory is a focal point of Wisley and one of the first buildings seen on entering the gardens. It is also an early example of conservationism as the building was designed to be in keeping with the garden and was built using recycled materials from derelict properties.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Imrie, George Blair
1885 births
1952 deaths
Architects from London
Arts and Crafts architects