Murray, John Campbell Turner

Person

Murray, John Campbell Turner

1861-1933

John Campbell Turner Murray was born in Glasgow in 1861 and educated at the Albany Academy, Glasgow. He was articled to James Salmon & Son in 1874 and attended Glasgow School of Art. In 1878 he moved to Edinburgh as an assistant in the office of Robert Rowand Anderson and remained there until 1882 when he returned to Glasgow as assistant to McKissack & Rowan.
In 1884 he moved to London as assistant to Arthur Cawston and remained with him until he died in 1894, their main work being the hospital for incurables at Streatham. Murray then took over the practice with an office at 21 Old Queen Street, Westminster. He secured the appointment of architect to the Admiralty Works Team for about five years from 1896, designing the huge Royal Naval Hospital at Chatham in conjunction with the Navy's engineer in chief Colonel Sir Henry Pilkington KG. Murray was also responsible for the Royal Naval Hospitals at Portsmouth and Gibraltar. He was admitted FRIBA on 6 June 1904, his proposers being William Forrest Salmon, Anderson and Henry Hare.
Sometime after that date Murray was briefly in partnership with another London Scot, James Murray Minty. Minty was born in 1857 and articled to T Farquharson, resident architect and engineer on the Macduff Harbour Works, in 1872. In 1878 he moved to Edinburgh to work for the School Board architect Robert Wilson, taking classes at Heriot-Watt College, and in 1882 moved again, this time to London to attend Professor T Roger Smith's classes at University College London. Shortly afterwards he began assisting in Smith's office. He passed the qualifying exam in April 1885. Minty's movements over the ensuing years are unclear but he commenced practice on his own account at Gray's Inn Square in 1894. In 1896-7 he was associated with C E Mallows on the design of the Granard Memorial Church in Putney. This association appears to have continued until about 1900 and they shared an address at 21 Old Queen Street, Westminster at this time. He was admitted ARIBA in mid-1901, his proposers being Smith, Arthur Cates, and the hospital specialist Alfred Hessel Tiltman. The partnership of J C T Murray & J A Minty had ended by 1914 when Murray had his office at 35 Old Queen Street and Minty at 35 Craven Street, Charing Cross.
Murray specialised in churches and suburban houses, his major works in private practice being Presbyterian churches at Bromley (Kent), Dublin, Guernsey and Singapore. He died in January 1933.

Dictionary of Scottish Architects: http://www.scottisharchitects.org.uk/architect_full.php?id=202079