Mervyn Macartney

Sir Mervyn E. Macartney FSA FRIBA (16 September 1853 – 28 October 1932) was a British architect and Surveyor of the Fabric of St Paul's Cathedral between 1906 and 1931. Macartney was a leading figure in the Arts and Craft movement, being a founder of the Art Workers' Guild and the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, and an influential voice as the editor of The Architectural Review and via his publications The Practical Exemplar of Architecture and Later Renaissance Architecture in England with John Belcher.

The English House 1860–1914: Catalogue to an Exhibition of Photographs and Drawings in 1980 stated that Macartney did not deserve the comparative obscurity that he has today, while Peter Davey in his 1980 book Arts and Crafts Architecture: The Search for Earthly Paradise described Macartney as the least Ruskin of the architects that came from Richard Norman Shaw's tutorage.

Early life Macartney was born in London on 16 September 1853, the youngest of the four sons of Elizabeth and Maxwell Macartney, a doctor. until 1873 when he completed his education at Lincoln College, Oxford, before working under the tutorial of Richard Norman Shaw. Before he started his own practice he travelled across Europe visiting France, Italy and Germany. There are various dates to when Macartney started his own practice, ranging from 1877, which must be inaccurate as he was articled to Shaw at this time, to 1882. In 1891, he married the Hon. Elizabeth Wilhelmina Ritchie, the daughter of Charles Ritchie, 1st Baron Ritchie of Dundee.

Architectural practice

Examples of buildings and estates that Macartney worked on include:

a pilastered conservatory at Swaylands in the Kentish Weald a rebuilding of St Leonard's Church, Downham in Lancashire The Court, Woolhampton South Avenue in Whiteley Village Egerton Place, Knightsbridge on the Smiths Charity Estate 169 Queen's Gate in South Kensington, London South Library, Islington Guinness Trust tenements in Draycott Avenue, Chelsea, in 1891.(Robert John Stirling was instructed to use them as a model when he came to design tenements for the Trust to the north of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin) Welders, Chalfont St. Giles (his father-in-law Charles' home) Newbury Town War Memorial

In addition to his architectural designs, Macartney also designed the organ case at St Thomas Church in Winchelsea, the only known example of this type of work.

The Architectural Review Macartney was one of the original editorial board members of The Architectural Review, founded in 1896, along with Sir Reginald Blomfield, Ernest Newton and Henry Wilson. In 1896, he wrote a piece for the review criticising the redevelopment of Charing Cross Road by the Metropolitan Board of Works, which he had previously submitted plans for as part of the competition for the redevelopment. In 1903, Macartney had a disagreement with the then editor of the review, D.S. MacColl, who had criticised the 1903 Art and Crafts Exhibition Society show as being amateurish. Macartney's retort was that MacColl wasn't an architect. MacColl was sacked after another financial crisis at the journal, and Macartney replaced him as the editor for the review serving from 1905 until 1921. and remained in the role until his resignation in November 1930. He was made the consulting architect for Durham Cathedral in 1911, replacing C. Hodgson Fowler who had died the previous year. With architect Detmar Blow and sculptor Sir William Reid Dick, they designed the Kitchener Memorial in the All Souls' Chapel in St Paul's. Other work included completing the work of his predecessor as surveyor, Somers Clarke, on the St Michael and St George's Chapel, and the adding of a hot water heating system for the building and later installing fire resistance partitions to the cathedral's iconic dome. Macartney, along with W. Godfrey Allen, set the building restriction St Paul's heights to protect the view of the Cathedral's views across the city. Macartney designed the St Paul's Choristers war memorial, a timber free standing screen built by Henry Poole, which is located at the north wall of the quire aisle.

Arts and crafts Macartney was a member of the St George's Art Society, which along with fellow society, the Fifteen, promoted the unity of the arts. However, in 1884, both the Royal Academy of Arts and the Royal Institute of British Architects were seemingly trying to work against this. Macartney, along with fellow Shaw apprentices W. R. Lethaby, Edward Prior, Ernest Newton and Gerald C. Horsley, plus metal worker W. A. S. Benson, designer Heywood Sumner, painter and brother C. H. H. Macartney, sculptors Hamo Thornycroft and Edward Onslow Ford, and the architect John Belcher set about founding the Art Workers' Guild.

Macartney, along with Blomfield and John Belcher complained to The Times in 1901 about the Victoria and Albert Museum holding an exhibition of continental Art Nouveau.

Kenton & Co.

Desk designed by Mervyn Macartney, built by W. Hall for Kenton and Co. now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Six years after the creation of the Art Worker's Guild in 1890, he was one of the co-founders of the furniture company Kenton & Co.. His co-founders were Sidney Barnsley, Reginald Blomfield, William Lethaby, Ernest Gimson, Stephen Webb and Colonel Harold Esdaile Malet. The company had been setup with the object of designing, making and supplying furniture of excellent quality from an idea by William Lethaby and Ernest Gimson, with the formal registration in February 1891 with capital of £3000. Macartney was the company chairman and the business operated from Jubilee Place, Chelsea before moving to Brownlow Mews in Guilford Street.

Honours and later life Memorial plaque to Macartney in the crypt of St. Paul's Cathedral Macartney was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects (FRIBA) in 1889, before resigning in 1891, along with John Belcher and Ernest Newton over a dispute before being reinstated in 1906. A bust of Macartney carved by Michael Murphy was exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in London during 1892. He was made an Honorary Corresponding Member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and was elected the Master of the Art Workers' Guild in 1899. Macartney died on 28 October 1932.

Publications Later Renaissance Architecture in England (1901) English Houses and Gardens in the 17th and 18th Centuries (1908) The Practical Exemplar of Architecture (1908–27)