Prentice, Andrew Noble

Person

Prentice, Andrew Noble

1866-1941

Andrew Noble Prentice was born in Greenock on 20 April 1866, the son of Thomas Prentice, and attended the University of Glasgow before being articled to William Leiper from November 1883 to 1888, remaining as assistant for a few months after completing his apprenticeship. In the latter year he won the Soane Medallion, which together with family money enabled him to undertake extensive travels in the following two years. He set off in February 1889, his first port of call being Malta, after which he toured Italy, Sicily and France. He returned in August 1889 and it appears that he may have made an enquiry about entering the RA Schools at that time: he was certainly in contact with R Phené Spiers, who advised him to undertake a further study tour, this time of Spain, which lasted from November of that year until June 1890. His studies there were published in 1893 as the folio 'Renaissance Architecture and Ornament in Spain', dedicated to the Queen Regent, Dona Maria Christina. On his return he obtained a place in the office of Thomas Edward Collcutt. He passed the qualifying exam in March 1891, enabling him to be admitted ARIBA on 8 June of that year, his proposers being Collcutt, Spiers and Leiper. In that same year he commenced practice at Hastings house, 10 Norfolk Street, Strand, where he remained until his death. A second visit to Spain was made in 1893 in connection with the publication of his book. In the mid-1890s he undertook work as a perspectivist for Niven & Wigglesworth and in 1894 he formed a brief association with A T Bolton to submit a joint entry in the competition for Durham County Buildings. Prentice was elected FRIBA on 3 February 1902, again with the support of Collcutt and Spiers but this time with Aston Webb as his third proposer. From 1920 until 1933 he was in partnership with William M Dean and from 1935 until 1940 with H J Scaping and Arthur Henry Wheatley. Like Voysey he was a member of the Arts Club, where the Architects' Table included Ernest George and Willaim Flockhart; and along with Voysay he was one of the founders of the Imperial Arts League, now the Artists' League of Great Britain in 1909. Although they are siad to have addressed each other as Mr Voysey and Mr Prentice, they were good friends, Prentice commissioning Voysey to design his book plate Prentice had an extensive practice, principally for large houses and formal gardens, the restoration and enlargement of older houses and ship interiors. In his earlier years he worked in an early to mid seventeenth century style close to that of Ernest Newton, notably at Cavenham which featured importantly in volume II of Hermann Muthesius’s ‘Das Englische Haus’ (revised edition 1908) but thereafter, as Muthesius noted, there was a trend towards a simpler and more classical Early Georgian with tall roofs and big stacks as at Stenigot built in 1911, paralleling developments in Lutyens’ office. Old English was an equally important part of his repertoire, notably at the timber-framed Chelwood of 1904 and the stone-built Lintrathen Lodge at Greenock of 1912. he had a particularly good clientele for work of this kind in the Cotswolds where he built several early seventeenth century vernacular houses completely anew as well as restoring and extending others, all in a fastidious arts-and-crafts idiom designed to merge with their neighbours or settle into the landscape as if they had always been there. Sometimes material salvaged from demolitions was used to achieve that end, notably at Willersey. Prentice’s success stemmed from his ‘taut and forceful drawing’ ‘lucid and precise planning’ (Muthesius), meticulous attention to detail in woodwork and metalwork and the business connections of his family, particularly his shipowner brother Thomas for whom he built houses in Glasgow and in Lanarkshire. His clients tended to be either artistic or rather well-off, the most exotic being Baroness Orczy whose Villa Bijou at Monte Carlo he remodelled with an Italian garden in the early 1920s. In person Prentice was about 5 feet 8 inches in height, bearded, rather stout and a heavy smoker who wore a cardigan in preference to a waistcoat. In manner he was very formal with a very precise diction for even the smallest details of life which his nephews and nieces found eccentric. He never married, living alone without much in the way of domestic help: in later years at least home life was frugal: while family members were welcome to stay, meals were not provided, probably because he had got into the habit of easting at the Arts Club. The last months of his life were spent mainly in the care of his brothers and their families, partly because of declining health and partly because of the blitz. Prentice died at Willow Park in his native Greenock on 23 December 1941.

Dictionary of Scottish Architects: http://www.scottisharchitects.org.uk/architect_full.php?id=200170