Sir Edward Guy Dawber was an architect and watercolourist active in the late-19th and early-20th centuries.
He was especially noted for his designs for country houses and their gardens as well as for the prominent role he took in establishing, in 1926, the Council for the Preservation of Rural England, of which he became vice-president and chairman.
Dawber was born at King's Lynn, Norfolk, on 3 August 1861, the younger son of John Stockdale Dawber of King's Lynn and his wife, Lois Ellen Edwards and educated at King's Lynn grammar school.
For four years he was articled to local architect, William Adams. Dawber later moved to Dublin where he worked for a year in the offices of Thomas Deane until the Land League riots forced him back to England. He then moved to London where he joined the offices of Ernest George and attended the Royal Academy Schools.
In 1887 George appointed him clerk of works at Batsford Park in Gloucestershire. It was soon after this that Dawber set up his own offices, first at Bourton on the Hill in Gloucestershire in 1890 and then, in 1891, at 22 Buckingham Street, Strand, in London.
Dawber was an active member of the Art Worker's Guild and author of several books on English vernacular architecture, particularly that found in the Cotswolds and in Kent and Sussex.
He died at his home, 64 Hamilton Terrace, London, on 24 April 1938 and was survived by his wife, Mary (nee Eccles), daughter of the architect Thomas Edward Eccles, whom he had married in 1896 and with whom he had no children.
Bibliography
Briggs, M.S., ‘Dawber, Sir (Edward) Guy (1861–1938)’, rev. Kaye Bagshaw, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/32748> [accessed 8 January 2008]
Dictionary of Scottish Architects, DSA Architect Biography Report, 'Sir (Edward) Guy Dawber' <http://www.codexgeo.co.uk/dsa/architect_full.php?id=M003314> [accessed 8 January 2008]
Kinney, Laurence. 'Guy Dawber', in Airs, Malcolm (ed.), The Edwardian Great House (Oxford: Department for Continuing Education, Oxford University, 2000), pp. 133-43.
National Archives, National Register of Archives, Person Details, 'Dawber, Sir Edward Guy (1861-1938) Knight Architect, GB/NNAF/P157731' <http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/nra/searches/subjectView.asp?ID=P7655> [accessed 8 January 2008]
National Portrait Gallery, London, Search the Collection, 'Sir (Edward) Guy Dawber (1861-1938), Architect' <http://www.npg.org.uk/live/search/person.asp?LinkID=mp01210> [accessed 8 January 2008]