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From Dictionary
of Scottish Architects
Fred Rowntree was born in 1860 in Scarborough, the son of John
Rowntree, master grocer and Ann Webster. His brother, also John Rowntree, was a
tea and coffee merchant and café owner there and another relative, William
Rowntree, was a prosperous draper who subsequently built a department store. The
family were Quakers and related to the chocolate manufacturers. Fred was
educated at Bootham School, York, and articled to Charles Augustus Bury of
Scarborough from 1876 to 1880. Thereafter he was assistant to Edward Burgess in
London and a clerk of works in Leicestershire until 1885 when he was taken into
partnership by Charles Edeson of Scarborough, the practice title becoming Edeson
& Rowntree. He moved office to London in 1890, but in the same year he
entered into partnership with Malcolm Stark in Glasgow. The reason for this move
is not yet clear but Stark had won the Govan District Asylum competition and was
always coming close to a major national competition win, the Rowntrees had
Glasgow connections through the Henderson family and on 6 October 1886 at the
Friends Meeting House, North Portland Street FRed Rowntree had married Mary Anna
Gray, a daughter of William Gray of Gray, Dunn & Company (biscuit
manufacturers), who were also Quakers. Helen Henderson had, as her second
husband, married the painter E A Walton and through them Fred Rowntree became
acquainted with George Walton, with whom he worked closely for decorative work
in the 1890s.
In 1900 the partnership of Stark & Rowntree was dissolved as a long
succession of near misses in national competitions, together with health
problems, had resulted in Stark descending into alcoholism. They had only
narrowly missed winning the commission for Belfast City Hall, but the Govan
District Asylum had remained their only significant win. Rowntree relocated his
practice in Hammersmith.
In 1907 Rowntree's son Douglas Woodville Rowntree (born in England c. 1888), who
had studied at the Architectural Association for the previous two years and had
passed the preliminary exam in 1906, entered the practice as improver. He passed
the intermediate exam the following year and was soon promoted to assistant. He
sought additional experience from April to September 1910 in the firm of
Mussellwhite & Sapp, builders, of Basingstoke, but continued in his father's
firm thereafter. In 1912 he and Fred's younger son Colin (born 9 August 1891 at
9 Queen Square, Strathbungo) were taken into partnership as Fred Rowntree &
Sons. In the same year they won the competition for the West China University at
Chengtu, Szechuan; Douglas Woodville took charge of the office for more than six
months whilst his father was away in China attending to the project.
During the First World War Fred Rowntree joined forces with Charles Spooner and
Arthur Joseph Penty to form an enterprise employing Belgian refugees in the
prefabrication of buildings for re-erection in Belgium after the war. Douglas
Woodville Rowntree joined the armed forces in January 1916.
The practice continued under the same title and at the same address - 11
Hammersmith Terrace, Hammersmith - after the war. Douglas Woodville was admitted
ARIBA on 3 March 1919, his proposers being his father, Spooner and Stanley
Davenport Adshead.
Taken from the Dictionary
of Scottish Architects
More details about Fred at:
Frederick Rowntree and Family in the Early Twentieth Century
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