Arthur Cawston

Arthur Cawston (4 February 1857 – June 1894) was a British architect and surveyor active in London between the 1870s and 1890s. He is known for late-Victorian ecclesiastical and institutional buildings, notably the Grade II* listed former St Philip's Church in Whitechapel, later St Augustine with St Philip's and now Whitechapel Library, and for his 1893 publication A Comprehensive Scheme for Street Improvements in London.

Life and career

Cawston was born at Clapham Common, Surrey, now in London, on 4 February 1857. He is also recorded as architect of stables at Ashburn Mews, South Kensington, built in 1883.

The church was declared redundant in 1979 and converted into a medical and dental library for the London Hospital Medical College in 1985–1988. It was opened as Whitechapel Library by Anne, Princess Royal, on 21 November 1988. The Crown Lane buildings were designed by Cawston in a domestic Tudor-Jacobean red-brick style. Cawston died in a shooting accident in June 1894, before the hospital was opened by the Princess of Wales on 3 July 1894. The wing bears Whitehead's initials, "R.W.", and survives as the Whitehead Room. The attribution to Cawston rests on later secondary accounts.

London street-improvement scheme

In 1893 Cawston published A Comprehensive Scheme for Street Improvements in London, accompanied by Maps and Sketches through Edward Stanford. A later account by London historian Peter Berthoud described the scale of Cawston's vision as "immense", while noting that the scheme had little influence on London planning.

Selected works

Row of shops, Norwood, London, 1880–1881. Stables, Balham Hill, London, 1881. Church of the Ascension, Balham Hill, London, 1883. Stables, Ashburn Mews, South Kensington, London, 1883. Music-room wing, Paddockhurst, Sussex, 1883. St Luke's, Bromley Common, London, 1886. St Philip's Church, Whitechapel, London, 1888–1892; later St Augustine with St Philip's and now Whitechapel Library; Grade II* listed. Model-farm buildings, Paddockhurst Estate, Sussex; recorded in the Bedford Lemere daybooks and later replaced. British Home and Hospital for Incurables, Crown Lane, Streatham, opened 1894.

Publications

Death

Cawston died in June 1894 in a shooting accident, before the completion of the British Home and Hospital for Incurables at Crown Lane.