William Bidlake


William Henry Bidlake MA, FRIBA 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 Das englische Haus, 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 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, 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 to 1938, Professor of Architecture of the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists.
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.

Major built works