Arthur Ashpitel

Arthur Ashpitel (1807–1869) was an English architect. He trained under his father, William Hurst Ashpitel before setting up his own practice in 1842, and working in partnership with John Whichcord Jr. between 1850 and 1855. Ashpitel's works include the churches of St Barnabas, Homerton and St John the Evangelist, Blackheath.

Life

Early years Ashpitel was born in Hackney, London in 1807, the son of architect William Hurst Ashpitel. He was educated at Dr. Burnet's school in Hackney (see Sutton House, London) and trained as an architect under his father, but two childhood accidents damaged his health, and he did not set up in practice until 1842. They also designed churches, private houses, and the Ophthalmic Hospital and Kent Infirmary at Maidstone. They turned their attention to the improvement of dwellings for the labouring classes, and, for a committee, erected a block of dwellings for artisans at Lambeth. They promoted the idea of living in flats in a publication called Town Dwellings: an essay on the erection of fireproof houses in flats. At Blackheath he built St John the Evangelist's Church (1852).

Later career In 1853 he left England in the company of David Roberts, R.A., and lived for some time in Rome. An attack of malaria, suffered in Piedmont further damaged his health. In 1855, he dissolved the partnership with Whichcord, but continued to accept commissions.

In 1854 he restored the chapel of a former leper hospital at Great Ilford for the Rev. James Reynolds, with whom he had been to school, adding a porch, and a residence, and in 1858 and wrote a history of the building. He also restored Sutton Church, about a mile away, In 1862 he built the church at Aldborough Hatch in Essex. and several other professional works for the publisher John Weale. He contributed biographies of architects to the Encyclopædia Britannica, and papers to the Royal Institute of British Architects, and was a regular contributor to Notes and Queries and the Owl. having left a valuable collection of vases and books to the Society of Antiquaries of London (which still remain part of its Library collection), and his two drawings of Rome to the nation;

He left monies for an annual architectural award in his name: the Ashpitel Prize.