Peter E. Bicknell

Peter Bicknell (16 June 1907 – 31 May 1995) was a British architect, author, exhibition curator and mountaineer. He practised as an architect in Cambridge with H. C. Hughes as Hughes and Bicknell, including commissions for the University of Cambridge and its colleges, notably Fen Court at Peterhouse and an extension to the Scott Polar Research Institute (1968), as well as commercial buildings and private houses. His designs were predominantly Modernist in style. He lectured in architecture and art history at the Cambridge School of Architecture, and was a fellow of Downing College.

In the 1980s, after retiring from his architectural practice, Bicknell curated art history exhibitions at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge and elsewhere. As a mountaineer, he is remembered for his 1932 traverse of the Cuillin Ridge on Skye in just over 8 hours. His books include British Hills and Mountains (1947) and Picturesque Scenery of the Lake District 1752–1855 (1990).

Early life and education Peter Bicknell was born on 16 June 1907 in Rowland Gills, County Durham, and private houses. Their works were mainly Modernist in style, which was unusual in Cambridge before the Second World War. described in its grade II listing as "the only pre-war Cambridge college accommodation building in the International Modern style and the forerunner to other college buildings constructed at both Oxford and Cambridge after the war"; Commercial buildings include Essex House on Regent Street (1936) On a smaller scale, the house Bicknell designed for himself and his wife on Newton Road is described by Janet Adam Smith as a "small masterpiece" with a "cunning design" integrating the garden with the building to make it appear to be located in the countryside.

Source Simon Bradley, Nikolaus Pevsner. Cambridgeshire (The Buildings of England series) (Yale University Press; 2014)