Balfour & Turner

British architectural partnership formed in 1885 by Eustace (James Anthony) Balfour (b Whittingehame, East Lothian, 18 June 1854; d Whittingehame, 14 Feb 1911) and Hugh Thackeray Turner (b Wroughton, Wilts, 1850; d Godalming, 11 Dec 1937). Balfour studied under Basil Champneys in 1877 and began practising in 1879. Turner, the more gifted artistically, was articled to George Gilbert Scott but reacted strongly against his approach. He joined the Art Workers' Guild and became the first secretary of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (1883-1911). The first work by Balfour & Turner was Ampton Hall (1885-9), Bury St Edmunds, designed in a restrained Jacobean manner. In 1890 Balfour was appointed Surveyor of the Grosvenor Estate, London, and the partnership built several works for the estate in the 1890s, including houses in Mount Street, Brook Street and Balfour Place in a severe Queen Anne Revival style, with plain brick walls and prominent dormer windows, and Aldford House (1897; destr. 1931), Park Lane, in an ornate Jacobean manner. The church of St Anselm (1891; destr. 1938), Davies Street, was regarded as their best work, with plain brick exterior surfaces and squat forms echoing the Romanesque Revival, and a light and graceful interior in waxed sandstone and rough white plaster. The columns and west window of the church were reused in St Anselm (1938-41; by N. Cachemaille-Day), Belmont, Wealdstone. Their other works in London included York Street Chambers (1892), Marylebone, and Campden House Chambers (1894), Kensington, which their contemporaries considered exemplary for the planning of chambers; both buildings continued the earlier Queen Anne Revival style. Their rebuilding of the Scottish Church (1909), Crown Court, was Jacobean in manner, with oak galleries and roof trusses contrasting with white plaster walls.

See the Abbreviations for further details.