Herbert Bartlett


Sir Herbert Henry Bartlett, 1st Baronet was a civil engineer and contractor responsible for many landmark buildings in London.

Life

Bartlett was born at Hardington Mandeville. Aged 23, he joined Perry & Company, a civil engineering contractor founded by East End carpenter John Perry, based in Bow, east London, in 1865. He became a partner in the business in 1872, and after the death of Perry's three sons, became sole proprietor in 1888. In 1897, Bartlett signed a £877,000 contract to construct a deep tube under the Thames from Waterloo to Baker Street - part of the present-day Bakerloo Line.
Bartlett was president of the Institute of Builders and the London Master Builders Association, and three times Master of the Worshipful Company of Pattenmakers. He was made a Baronet in 1913.
He married Ada Charlotte Barr, and had several children. He lived from 1900 at Cornwall Gardens in west London.
He is buried in the family grave, which lies in the western half of Highgate Cemetery in north London on the main central path, just below the entrance to the Egyptian Avenue.
On his death his baronetcy passed to his grandson, Basil, as his two eldest sons had predeceased him.

Memorials

In 1911, he gave £30,000 to University College London to fund a new building for the School of Architecture, along with the Department of Applied Statistics and studios for the teaching of sculpture. The donation was initially anonymous, but in 1919 he consented to his name being revealed, and The Bartlett now bears his name.
Bartlett also made a sizeable donation to Ernest Shackleton's first voyage to Antarctica, where the explorer named a peak 'Mount Bartlett' after him.

Notable works

Bartlett's contracts and designs included:
Bartlett was also a keen yachtsman, being commodore of the Royal London Yacht Club.