| Architect Details |
William Adam and John Baxter, architect and mason 1731-6; Archibald Simpson 1822; John Smith, architect 1843; J & W Smith, architects 1845-7; Wardrop and Reid, architects 1879-81; George Edmund Street, architect 1876; Harvey Mennie (assistant to estate architect) and D Macandrew & Co, architects 1891; George Bennett Mitchell & Son, architects 1930; Meldrum & Mantell, architects 1997; Mantell Ritchie, architects 2005.
John Smith was born in 1781, the son of William Smith, architect and builder, Aberdeen. Of the father little is recorded except that he was known as 'Sink'em'; that he had his workshop in Longacre; that he designed and built Gilcomston Chapel of Ease and the houses at the bottom end of Marischal Street, all in Aberdeen. It is not known exactly when he died but it appears to have been between February and November 1812. The son is said to have been sent at an early age to the office of James Playfair (or perhaps he assisted him in some junior capacity at the building of Cairness, Aberdeenshire, but neither the Playfair diary nor the Gordon muniments provide any evidence of it). He cannot have worked long for Playfair who died in 1794, and it is not known which London office he was in thereafter. Around 1804 he returned to Aberdeen with an extensive collection of plans and was nearly lost as his ship entered Aberdeen Harbour in a storm. Circa 1805 Smith designed his first major work in Aberdeen, a large house on Union Street for Patrick Milne of Crimonmogate. Two years later Smith succeeded Thomas Fletcher as engineer to the King Street, Union Street and Union Terrace works and laid out St Nicholas Street to connect it with George Street. By 1860 he had produced the first accurate survey of Aberdeen which was published in the same year. Thereafter he built up the largest business both in architecture and building and cabinet-making in the north-east, with headquarters at his house at 142 King Street, Aberdeen. He was associated with Thomas Telford on the harbour improvements planned from 1824 and was formally appointed superintendent of work for the City of Aberdeen in that same year. In that capacity he attended to such matters as street lighting, cleansing and executions (which are said to have brought gloom to the Smith household for weeks). He was also agent for the Imperial Insurance Company. John died after a long and painful illness at Rosebank Hardgate, a pleasant 18th-century mansion with a large garden which he inherited from his father-in-law. He had married Margaret Grant, only child of Colonel George Grant of Auchterblair in Banffshire, a marriage which brought useful landed connections, their first home being at Longacre adjacent to the elder William Smith's house and builder's yard. Near contemporary accounts record that she was tall, good-looking and aristocratic in demeanour which a family portrait appears to confirm. Smith himself was 'a shy retiring man as well as an able and diligent official'. Most members of their family died early but his son William joined the practice after graduating MA at Marischal College and subsequently sought experience in London with Thomas Leverton Donaldson. He appears to have returned to Aberdeen by 1842 and was made a partner in 1845, succeeding his father as Aberdeen City Architect on his death. His eldest daughter Margaret Grant Smith (died 1857) married Alexander Gibb, the civil engineer, on 17 March 1831. Some biographical details will be found in Lettice Milne Rae's 'Story of the Gibbs.' John Smith's work was in his early years almost exclusively refined neo-Greek, but from 1820 onwards most of his churches and large houses were Tudor Gothic, the latter sometimes with Scottish features as at Balmoral from about 1830. These were closely modelled on William Burn's style with which he had become acquainted at Robert Gordon's, Fintray and Auchmacoy. Brief biographical notices with short lists of principal works compiled by John's son William appeared in the Aberdeen Journal' in July 1852, in 'The Builder' and in the 'Architectural Publication Society's Dictionary'. A great many informative references to his career in Aberdeen will be found in G M Frazer's biography of Archibald Simpson (1790-1847), which appeared as a serial in the 'Aberdeen Weekly Journal' of 1918. A collected copy of these articles is available at Aberdeen Public Library. A fragmentary list of plans and some of his accounts (1807-1832) are in the National Monuments Record of Scotland.
William Smith II was the fourth of John Smith and Margaret Grant's eight children, born 16 September 1817. He was educated at Aberdeen Grammar School and at Marischal College where he graduated MA. During that period he studied sketching and watercolour under James Giles. Thereafter he was articled to his father, working alongside Robert Kerr, the future Professor of Architecture at King's College in London. Smith subsequently spent eighteen months in London as assistant to Thomas Leverton Donaldson in whose office he had the opportunity to study the extensive library and classical antiquities that the latter had collected. He may have attended Donaldson's classes at University College as he was admitted ARIBA on 25 July 1842, his proposers being Donaldson, Samuel Angell and George Bailey. At that date he appears to have been back in Aberdeen, but shortly thereafter he embarked on a tour of Italy and of Greece which lasted almost two years. He returned to his father's office as senior assistant and became his partner in 1845. This enabled him to marry on 2 July 1846 Mary Blaikie, born 27 September 1826 and one of the five children of Dr Patrick Blaikie RN who came of a prominent family of ironmasters in Aberdeen, Blaikie Brothers. Family photographs show that she remained a beautiful woman in middle age. Smith's father having gone into semi-retirement at Rosebank, they set up house at 142 King Street. William Smith's first major commission was Trinity Hall, Union Street, Aberdeen, in 1846. Its adaptation of neo-Tudor to granite attracted the attention of the Prince Consort who in 1848 commissioned J & W Smith to reconstruct and enlarge old Balmoral Castle to which the elder Smith had built an addition in 1834-39. That commission did not proceed beyond the sketch plan stage but when the commission extended to a completely new house in 1852 their appointment attracted the attention of William Burn. Recent research by Paul Bradley has shown that Burn obtained an interview with the Prince Consort, probably to complain that the elder Smith had unprofessionally displaced him at Robert Gordon's College and at Fintray and had plagiarised his designs at Menie and elsewhere. Smith nevertheless retained the confidence of the Prince Consort and the construction of the castle in 1853-59 was followed by other buildings on the estate. By 1852 he had also officially succeeded to his father's post as Superintendent of the Town's Works, having taken on increasing amounts of work in an unofficial capacity during his father's latter years of declining health. William Smith and Mary Blaikie had sixteen children. All eight of their surviving children were sent to the University of Aberdeen. Only the eldest, John, born 5 July 1847 became an architect. John Smith II is said to have been of 'gentle disposition and retiring habits' and 'not a man of robust frame…his health was on the whole delicate'. He married Helen Elsmie Hall, daughter of John Hall, merchant and sister of the prominent Aberdeen advocate Harvey Hall, and was taken into partnership in or about 1880, the practice title becoming W & J Smith. Like William and Mary Smith before them, John and his wife set up house at 142 Great King Street. They had three sons and a surviving daughter who were aged 8, 6, 4 and 2 when John Smith died suddenly on 11 April 1887 after a long period of declining health, leaving 'absolutely no money at all'. When they grew up all three sons entered bank service since a university education could not be afforded, thus bringing the Smith dynasty of architects to a close. Shortly after John's death William Smith merged his practice with that of his former pupil William Kelly, the practice name now becoming W & J Smith & Kelly. This partnership was dissolved just before William Smith died at 142 King Street on 22 December 1891, saddened not only by the death of his son but also by that of his wife who had predeceased him on 21 January 1883. During his short final illness he was cared for by his son Dr Patrick Blaikie Smith, later of San Remo. His moveable estate was a surprisingly modest £1026 5s 8d, although he may have owned some property beyond the houses and yard in King Street. In politics he was described as being conservative and he 'shrank from publicity…present day methods of gaining popularity were foreign to his disposition.' Principal Cooper described him as having a 'high bred courtesy' and 'a reticence to the point of shyness'. It was perhaps these qualities which lost him the commission for Aberdeen Sheriff Court in the limited competition of 1861 set up between himself, James Matthews and the Edinburgh practice of Peddie & Kinnear. That project subsequently grew into that for Aberdeen Municipal Buildings and was the major disappointment of his career. His interests outwith architecture were music, children and animals. Dogs figure importantly in family photographs and either he or his son of the same name appears to have been the author of a book entitled 'The uses and abuses of domestic animals'. None of his daughters married and they were said to have led a somewhat impoverished existence after his death, dependent on the support of their surviving brothers, all of whom had successful careers.
George Edmund Street was born at Woodford, Essex on 20 June 1824, the son of Thomas Street, a London solicitor and his second wife Mary Anne Millington. He was educated at Mitchan and at Camberwell Collegiate School, but in 1839 his father retired taking the family to Crediton, Devon. Early in 1840 he was sent to London to train as a solicitor but in May his father died and he returned to live with his mother first at Crediton and then at Exeter. He took lessons in drawing and painting from an uncle by marriage, Thomas Haseler, in Taunton, and studied the medieval architecture of Devon. In the spring of 1841 he was articled to Haseler's cousin Owen Carter for two years only followed by a further year as an assistant. In 1844 Street's mother went to live at Lee with her eldest son Thomas Henry, a solicitor in the family firm, enabling Street to seek experience with George Gilbert Scott and his partner William Bonython Moffat. While with Scott and Moffat, Street and his brother Thomas travelled and sketched extensively in Sussex, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Yorkshire and Cumbria. In 1845 he joined the Ecclesiological Society to which he was to contribute papers from 1848 until 1863. In 1847 while still an employee of Scott's Street was commissioned to design a new church at Biscovey in Cornwall. This was followed by other Cornwall commissions enabling him to set up his own office in London in 1849, but in 1850 through the influence of a client the Rev William Butler, the Vicar of Wantage, he was appointed architect to the Diocese of Oxford and moved office first to Wantage and then Oxford where in May 1852 he married Mariquita Proctor and took Edmund Sedding as assistant. The appointment of Philip Webb followed two years later in 1854. In 1850 Street travelled in France the first of many visits to the Continent; and in the following year and again in 1854 he toured northern Germany and published in 'The Ecclesiologist'; and in 1855 he published the hugely influential 'Brick and Marble in the Middle Ages: Notes of a Tour in the North of Italy', based on his extensive tour there in 1853. In 1855-56 he entered the international competition for the new cathedral at Lille, coming second to Henry Clutton and William Burges, the executed building being an amalgam of the two designs concocted by a previously unsuccessful competitor based in Lille. In 1856 Street returned to London and was appointed architect for the Crimea church in Constantinople, as the winning design by Burges could not be made to fit the site. His practice was essentially an ecclesiastical and collegiate one with commissions for churches as far afield as Paris, Vevey, Lausanne, Genoa and Rome until he was appointed architect for the London Law Courts in 1868 following an unsatisfactory competition in which he had been invited to take part. Street had particularly good connections in Yorkshire through the patronage of the Sykes family and in Aberdeenshire, initially through the Earl of Crawford & Balcarres's additions to Dunecht begun in 1867, although the Rev Frederick George Lee may have obtained a sketch design from him for St Mary's Carden Place, Aberdeen some years earlier. In the limited competition for St Mary's Episcopal Cathedral Edinburgh in 1872 his design was recommended by the assessor, Euan Christian, but the actual appointment went to George Gilbert Scott. In 1861- 63 Street made a series of study tours of Spain which resulted in his major book 'Some account of Gothic architecture in Spain', published in 1865, but from about 1870 onwards the sources of his architecture were more English than continental and at Marlborough College he even experimented with 'Queen Anne' in deference to the original buildings there. Street was elected ARA in 1866 and a full Academician in 1871, becoming the Academy's Professor of Architecture in 1880. He was Royal Gold Medallist in 1874 and was appointed a Chevalier of the Legion d'Honneur in 1878. His last two years were, however, clouded by personal tragedy and official harassment from the First Commissioner of Works, Acton Smee Ayrton. His first wife died following a tour of France and Switzerland in October 1874; in January 1876 he married Jessie Holland, but the marriage only lasted eight weeks as she died of a fever during a study tour in Rome. Street commenced his RA lectures in the Spring of 1881 but in the summer he began to suffer from severe headaches. He died of a stroke on 18 December of that year. The practice was continued by his son Arthur Edmund Street who published his lectures as an appendix to his Memoir.
James Maitland Wardrop was born in London on 16 March 1823, the son of James Wardrop MD, surgeon to George IV, and Margaret, widow of Captain Burn RN and daughter of George Dalrymple of North Berwick. He served his apprenticeship with Thomas Brown II of Edinburgh and was taken into partnership in 1849, the practice of Brown & Wardrop being based at 19 St Andrew Square. Wardrop gradually took over the design work relating to Brown's position as architect to the Prison Board of Scotland, his style and planning being closely based on that of David Bryce, in whose office he may have spent some time. Wardrop married on 28 September 1853 at Dundas Castle Anna Maria, 5th daughter of James Dundas, 24th and last of Dundas, a financially unsuccessful inventor. This widened the already extensive landed connections he had inherited from his mother. Much of his work consisted of modernising older houses, but in 1861 he secured the commission for the huge Scottish Baronial Lochinch, built for the 10th Earl of Stair as a setting for the collections of his countess, daughter of the Duc de Coigny. With a big tower as its dominant feature, well organised plan and indoor bowling alley and extensive formal gardens, it established him as a serious rival to Bryce, a position consolidated by the equally large and stylish Franco-Scottish Stitchill, Roxburgh (1866) and the remodelling of Callendar Park, Stirlingshire (1869-77) as a vast symmetrical Francois Ier chateau. Glenternie, Peeblesshire (1863), Ardwell, Wigtownshire (1869), Udny (1874) and Fairburn, Ross-shire (1877) were all of a similar school to Bryce's houses, but his substantial enlargement of the 16th-century Z-plan tower house of Nunraw, East Lothian (1868) in its own style with thick walls, small openings and convincing detail was by far the most accomplished essay in pure revivalism then achieved in Scotland, anticipating R S Lorimer's work much later; in similar vein was his rebuilding from ruins of Barnbougle, Dalmeny, Edinburgh (1881). At Kinnordy, Angus (1879), Wardrop again broke new ground, the house being large and picturesquely composed in an early-17th-century Scots style but with a studied avoidance of towers, turrets, parapets and other baronial compositional features. At his largest and finest house, Beaufort, Inverness-shire, (1880) Wardrop again demonstrated, as at Stitchill, that he could handle the asymmetrical composition of a really enormous house better than Bryce by concentrating the design into large, simple masses. While Wardrop's classical work was usually subdued Italianate, he became a pioneer of neo-Georgian through his association with the London decorators Wright and Mansfield's Adam-inspired refit of Haddo, Aberdeenshire (1879) and the rebuilding of Barskimming, Ayrshire (1882) in a convincing late-18th-century idiom. Wardrop also rebuilt a large number of country parish churches in a distinctive early decorated style, notable Cumnock, Ayrshire (1864), Methlick, Aberdeenshire (1865), Stow, Midlothian (1862), and Ayton (1867) and Langton (1871) in Berwickshire; he was also a tactful restorer, as can be seen at Mid Calder, West Lothian (1863). Brown appears to have retired or died in 1872 or 1873 (somewhat confusingly Thomas Brown II of Uphall died in that year but he does not appear to be related). The firm's chief draughtsman, Charles Reid, was then taken into partnership. Born in 1828, Charles Reid was a much younger brother of Alexander and William Reid of Elgin. and the chief assistant, Charles Reid, was taken into partnership. The practice does not seem to have adopted the title of Wardrop & Reid until 1874. In 1876 the firm succeeded the ailing David Cousin as architects to the British Linen Bank. Wardrop's son, Hew M Wardrop, born on 25 February 1856 and an assistant in George Edmund Street's office from 1874, rejoined the practice in the mid-1870s, subsequently merging it with that of Robert Rowand Anderson and George Washington Browne as Wardrop, Anderson & Browne. In his brief career the younger Wardrop proved a skilful exponent of a William Eden Nesfield-derived neo-Jacobean at Ballochmyle, Ayrshire (1885) and of Arts and Crafts vernacular at the restoration and enlargement of Tilliefour, Aberdeenshire (1885). His assistant Robert Stodart Lorimer was profoundly influenced by him. James Maitland Wardrop died on 27 June 1882 at Lydney Lodge, 2 Forbes Road, Edinburgh, a house designed and built for himself in 1865-66. Charles Reid died in 1883. Wardrop's son Hew M Wardrop (born 1856) merged the business with Robert Rowand Anderson and George Washington Browne's business as Wardrop, Anderson & Browne, with its address still at 19 St Andrew Square.
Harvey Mennie was born on 28 October 1871 at Belhelvie, Aberdeen, the son of Robert Mennie and Elizabeth Gordon. He was articled to Pirie & Clyne in 1886, attending classes at Robert Gordon's College and Gray's School of Art. In 1891 he became an assistant in the Earl of Aberdeen's Estate Office at Haddo, but he moved to the office of Alexander Mavor of Aberdeen in the following year as chief assistant. In 1894 and 1895 he sought wider experience in London with Frederick Hall-Jones, returning to Aberdeen in 1895 as chief assistant to Arthur Clyne. In 1903 he set up practice on his own account. In the ensuing years he exhibited several pen-and-ink perspective drawings at Aberdeen Artists' Exhibitions. He was admitted LRIBA on 4 July 1910, his proposers being Clyne, Jones's then partner Erskine Seaton Cummings and Arthur Hay Livingstone Mackinnon.
The practice D Macandrew & Co was probably formed when Daniel Macandrew of Aberdeen assumed A Winchester into partnership in the mid-1880s. Daniel Macandrew was born in about 1827 in Fortrose, Ross and Cromarty but when he was young his family moved to Drumoak in Deeside. He was initially articled to William Henderson of Aberdeen but moved to the workshop of Baillie Watson where he served two years as a joiner on the bench. In the mid-1840s he commenced practice on his own account at 22-24 John Street. His first foreman was James Coutts, the father of George Coutts, the architect. About the year 1850 Macandrew was seriously ill and as a result he decided to emigrate to New Zealand with his brother James and other members of the family, including James' wife Eliza and their baby son, aboard James' schooner, the Titan. They arrived in Dunedin in January 1851. The family were accompanied by John Fraser, a young man 'under the care' of Macandrew as well as two carpenters, James Scott and J Smith, who were in his service. Later that year he designed a church at Port Chalmers and a hall for the Dunedin Mechanics Institute as well as a 6-roomed cottage for a Mrs Perkins and her seven children. On 7 June 1851 Daniel married Margaret Dundas Oswald Hall, daughter of George Hall of Glasgow, in Dunedin and his eldest son, Colin, was born there. There is a conflict of information as to when Daniel returned to Scotland. His obituarist says that he remained in New Zealand for three years before returning to Scotland whilst he appears to have sailed for Sydney via Melbourne on the 'Louisa' in July 1852 with his wife and child indicating that he was intending to take a ship from there back to Scotland. Back in Aberdeen Daniel bought the joinery business of his former employers the Hendersons at 120 Loch Street. By then it had passed into the hands of James Henderson, younger brother of William. Macandrew was to remain at this address for the remainder of his working life. Shortly after setting up business at Loch Street Macandrew obtained important contracts for work at the University of Aberdeen. He was also architect to the Aberdeen Association for the Improvement of the Dwellings of the Labouring Classes and the Aberdeen Sanitary Reform Company. He was also a member of the Association for the Improvement of the Condition of the Poor and contributed both in time and means to this and other societies. Like the Hendersons Macandrew was a Free Churchman and one of his first commissions was for the Free John Knox Church in Gerrard Street. On 7 January1864 Macandrew was given a letter of recommendation by the Lord Provost, though it is unclear precisely what the purpose of this was. Toward the end of his career, he assumed A Winchester into the practice and the practice name became D Macandrew & Co but on Macandrew's retirement in about 1887, Winchester withdrew to set up his own business. The practice was taken over by Macandrew's third son Daniel junior and James A Smith who continued to trade under the same name. Daniel junior is described as an architect and builder. He lived with his parents at Vinery Cottage, Cults, Aberdeenshire but latterly had moved to a house of his own at 24 Polmuir Road, Aberdeen. Daniel senior died on 26 March 1899 aged 78 years survived by his wife and one son Archibald of his four sons and four daughters. Daniel junior had predeceased his father, dying on 15 June 1893. James A Smith carried on the business as sole partner. It was still in operation in the early 1930s.
George Bennett Mitchell was born on 27 November 1865 and educated in Aberdeen and Newburgh. He was articled to Pirie & Clyne in 1881 and joined the practice of Jenkins & Marr as assistant on completing his apprenticeship. He remained with them until 1887 when he was appointed architect in the surveyors' department of Davidson & Garden, advocates (i.e. solicitors), Aberdeen. While there he carried out a great deal of work on the Dunecht estate for A C Pirie, both at the house and in the village, and was allowed to undertake a few small private commissions in his own name. During these early years he made several visits to France and Italy. On leaving Davidson & Garden, Mitchell opened his own practice at 148 Union Street; the exact date for this is uncertain as Mitchell himself gives dates varying from 1898 to 1 January 1903 and 1 January 1904 in different documents. His business mainly consisted of country house work and villas and cottages for the estates with which he had become acquainted through his work with Davidson & Garden. In 1913 Mitchell's son George Angus Mitchell (born on his father's thirty-first birthday and educated at Aberdeen Grammar School) entered the practice as an apprentice, and was one of the first two students to enrol at Aberdeen School of Architecture when it opened in 1913. His training was interrupted in 1915 when he commenced war service as a subaltern in the Highland Divisional Engineers; he served in Palestine and France with the 52nd Lowland Divisional Engineers, reaching the rank of Honorary Colonel, and returned to his father's office on his demobilisation in 1919, completing his diploma course the following year. He practised in association with his father from 1921. The practice moved from 148 Union Street to 1 West Craibstone Street in 1922 and George Angus became a partner in 1929, the firm name becoming George Bennett Mitchell & Son. George Angus Mitchell was elected FRIBA in late 1930, his proposers being Clement George, James Brown Nicol and George Watt. This may have prompted his father to seek RIBA membership, as he applied for Licentiateship immediately and was admitted at the beginning of 1931, his proposers being George, Nicol and William Liddle Duncan; and in May of the same year he too became a Fellow, with the support of the RIBA Council as a whole. By this time George Bennett had been awarded an MBE; he was also a Justice of the Peace, and had acted as District Civil Commissioner at the time of the General Strike in 1926. George Bennett Mitchell's main interest outside the office was the Boy's Brigade, of which he became Commander and President of the Aberdeen Battalion in 1906. His concerns for social welfare were further manifested in his work as Red Cross Transport Officer in Aberdeen during the First World War. He was also a devoted churchman, being a lifelong member of the West Church of St Andrew, of which he was an elder for over forty years. From at least 1914 he had a country residence at Cean-na-coil, Aboyne, one of the several houses he designed there, as well as his Aberdeen house at 4 Deemount Terrace and later at 18 Rubislaw Terrace. George Angus Mitchell continued to be active in military circles after the First World War, taking command of the 139th Field Park Company (TA) with the rank of Captain in 1924 and taking over 236 Field Company as a Major in 1928. He was promoted to lieutenant-colonel on the outbreak of the Second World War and became CRE 9th Divisional Engineers, CRE North Highland Area and CRE Lothian and Border Area. The elder Mitchell was taken ill in October 1940 whilst working as Divisional Food Officer for the North-East of Scotland, a position he had taken on in 1938 when hostilities were imminent. He underwent an operation involving the amputation of a leg, and resigned from the Food Office shortly afterwards. He died at his home on 22 March 1941. He was survived by his son and his daughter Meta, who like him took a leading part in youth welfare work in the area. His wife had predeceased him some years earlier. George Angus Mitchell inherited the practice, returning to it on his release from war service in June 1945 and continuing it under the existing name of George Bennett Mitchell & Son. The younger Mitchell was President of the Aberdeen branch of the RE Old Comrades Association for some years before 1958; President of the Aberdeen Rotary Club from 1947 to 1948; and President of the Aberdeen Chapter of the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland in 1939, 1947 and 1949. Like his father, he was a lifelong member of the West Church of St Andrew, becoming a deacon in 1921 and an elder in 1939. In the later 1940s John Lamb was taken into partnership, followed in the later 1950s by Gordon Taylor and by Robert Alexander in 1971 and Alan Hamilton in 1976. George Angus Mitchell retired to Newburgh in 1962 and died there at his home, Thornhill, on 6 December 1964. He was survived by his wife Alice Jones and two married daughters.
Henry James Lyall Mantell was born on 11 December 1939 in Lusaka, Northern Rhodesia, the son of Henry Percy Mantell, superintendent of the African Lakes Corporation Stores, Northern Rhodesia and his wife, Barbara Anne Mantell, a teacher. His early education was through the Salisbury Correspondence School and was supervised by his mother. He later attended a school for European children founded by his mother in Abercorn, Northern Rhodesia but spent one year, 1946-47, in Macduff Infant School. From 1951-57 he attended Banff Academy where he was Dux in Art in 1956. From 1957-63 he studied at the Scott Sutherland School of Architecture, Aberdeen spending two years part-time and four years full-time. He won the Governor’s Prize for Building Construction in 1961. From 1957-58 he worked along with his studies as a trainee with Aberdeen City Architect’s Department. He was awarded the diploma in architecture in 1963. In 1963 he moved to Edinburgh as an assistant with Stanley Ross-Smith & Jamieson. He was elected ARIBA in 1965. On 3 March 1966 Mantell married Margaret Ollason Stewart. The couple have one son. Mantell then went to Australia and spent a three-year spell as assistant architect with the New South Wales Public Works Department in Sydney. In Australia he was involved with various siting and design projects associated with New South Wales Country Primary Schools section and with the research and report on the New South Wales country school central lending library project. In 1969 they returned to the United Kingdom and Mantell took a post as senior architect with Bedfordshire County Architect’s Department where he remained until 1973. He worked on various projects in the Lower School section of the County Architect's Department. During his stay in Bedford he served as Secretary of the Bedfordshire Association of Architects. He returned to Banff in 1973 as chief assistant to J J Meldrum, architect and surveyor. He became a partner in 1975 and remained as such until Meldrum’s retirement in 1987 when he became sole principal. The practice specialised in conservation work and were involved in restoration schemes of many buildings in the north of Scotland. Mantell has prepared quinquennial inspections for the National Trust for Scotland on many of thier northern properties and carries out similar inspections for private clients of Gordon Castle Tower, Fochabers and Dunecht. From 1987-2007 quinquennial inspections were also carried out for the Church of Scotland and the Episcopal Church. In 2004 Michael Ritchie joined as partner, the practice title becoming Mantell Ritchie. Mantell retired in 2005 though he remains a consultant. Outwith his professional life Mantell was chariman of the Banff Round Table from 1977-78. He is a member of the Rotary Club of Banff and was president from 1989-90. He enjoys watercolour and pen and ink sketching, plays golf and enjoys travel. He continues to present talks on architectural topics to local organisations and prepares articles for publication. He is closely involved with the activities of the Banff Preservation Society, serving as a committee member and treasurer. He is also a member of the Banff Renassance THI Project Board and is a Management Committee member of the North East Scotland Preservation Trust. The following are a list of the awards received by Meldrun and Mantell and Mantell Ritchie
1975 Architectural Heritage Year Award.
1975 Saltire Society Award.
1978 Civic Trust Award.
!992 Civic Trust Special Mention (12 North High Street, Portsoy).
2004 Aberdeenshire Design Awards - Highly Commended for Conservation (Banff Castle Ancillary Buildings).
2004 Aberdeenshire Design awards – Commended for Conservation (The Banff Aisle).
The follwing additional qualifications were gained by Mantell:
1998 – RIAS Conservation Accreditation (level 3)
2003 – RIAS Conservation Accreditation (level 4)
John J Meldrum set up practice at 40 High Street, Banff as an architect in 1948. He originally trained as a chartered surveyor but turned to architecture at some point prior to this date. In the later 1950s a branch office was opened in Turriff. Meldrum was a founder member of the Banff Preservation Society in 1965. In 1975 Meldrum took Henry (Harry) Mantell into partnership, the name then becoming Meldrum & Mantell. Meldrum retired in 1987 and died in 1990. The practice was awarded an Architectural Heritage Year Award and a Saltire Society Award in 1975 and a Civic Trust Award in 1978.
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Historic Environment Records (HER)