Celebrating Hampshire Historians

Atkinson, Thomas Dinham

9 April 1864 – 27 December 1948

The son of a clergyman, he was educated at Rossall School, Lancashire, and University College, London, and studied architecture under Sir Arthur Blomfield. He spent much of his early working life as an architect in partnership with C.W. Long in an office in Trumpington Street, Cambridge. He gained a reputation for medieval architecture through his work at Ely. The Hon. Archivist, Elizabeth Stazicker, comments. ‘TD Atkinson, who was Surveyor to the Dean and Chapter of Ely Cathedral from 1906 to 1920, is very important to us here both for his An Architectural History of the Benedictine Monastery of St Ethelreda at Ely, which of course deals largely with the College (precinct) buildings and for his account of the cathedral itself published in Volume iv of the Victoria History of Cambridgeshire. I gather that he had been articled to Blomfield in 1882, and from 1882-87 worked as his assistant and clerk of works on a number of church restoration projects.  He qualified in 1889 and by 1892 had his own practice in Cambridge (Kelly’s Directory). [The Ely Chapter minutes] show that he had hoped at first to continue as surveyor here after his appointment to Winchester, reported to the Chapter in January 1919 but it seems that it did not work out from the Dean and Chapter’s point of view, and in November 1920 they decided that he should be given 3 months’ notice.’

In 1919 he was appointed Architectural Surveyor to the Dean and Chapter of Winchester Cathedral, on the condition that he came to live in the city, which he did, at 7 Christchurch Road. [The Ely Chapter minutes examined by Stazicker] ‘show that he had hoped at first to continue as surveyor [there] after his appointment to Winchester, reported to the Chapter in January 1919 but it seems that it did not work out from the Dean and Chapter’s point of view, and in November 1920 they decided that he should be given 3 months’ notice,’

One of his aims at Winchester was ‘to bring again to the Cathedral the colour which it had once had’.  Later he was assisted by Wilfrid Carpenter Turner ARIBA, who succeeded him (husband of the local historian, Barbara Carpenter Turner). The only designs attributed locally, according to an obituary by the Very Rev. E.G. Selwyn, dean of Winchester, are Century House, the headquarters of the Hampshire Friendly Society, Jewry Street, Winchester (1925), now the nonconformist City Church. He also designed the rear wings of Science School at Winchester College. His private practice in Winchester is recorded in an extensive series of address books, diaries and notebooks in the HRO and shows a range of mainly minor works. He designed several memorials for the war dead and other purposes (lettering was one of his specialties), in wide range of churches and other places in Hampshire and elsewhere. Winchester College was a major client.   He was a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects. In 1907 he married Annie Gertrude Hathaway (1866-1950), a daughter of the Rev. J. Hathaway, rector of Rotherwick, Hampshire.

Atkinson is remembered as a prolific writer on architecture. His first work, Cambridge Described and Illustrated, published in 1897, is a work of more than 600 pages and took several years to write: even after a century, it is all over the net. Like most of his publications it is, he freely admitted, not ‘the result of any great amount of original research’, but was derived from a much larger work, with the cooperation of one of its co-authors. His books were popular and stayed in print for a long time: when he died A Glossary of Terms Used in English Architecture, was in its 6th edition, and English Architecture in its 12th. His only book on a local subject was A Survey of the Street Architecture of Winchester (‘very general’ according to the City of Winchester Trust). More typically, he contributed frequently to the Winchester Cathedral Record from 1932, mainly on the church’s structure – its sculpture, woodwork, monuments etc, but also a long paper on the close’s historic water supply, the Lockbourne (or Lockburn). He also contributed a handful of articles to the Proceedings, notably an extensive account of the cathedral close and a paper on ‘sources of Hampshire architecture’, modelled on his Local Style in English Architecture (1947).

(He is to be distinguished from Tom Atkinson MA, City Archivist, Winchester. A cousin of TDA with exactly the same name was born in Calcutta in 1869 and died in Merionethshire, Wales, in 1952.)

Sources

• HRO, 9M49, DC/E7/1, 215M85/19.

• British Library Catalogue

• Various papers, PHFC, 1939-1943

• Articles in Winchester Cathedral Record, (listed in: No. 29, 1960, pp. 26-28)

• https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Atkinson-8934

• Hampshire Chronicle, 1 January 1949

• Bullen, M., Hampshire: Winchester and the North (Buildings of England), 2010

Portrait

Contribution to county’s history

Minor aspects of the history of Winchester Cathedral, and more significantly its close.

Relevant published works

• A Survey of the Street Architecture of Winchester, Winchester, 1934

Critical Comments

Described by Selwyn as ‘one of the foremost architectural scholars in this country’, he was a prolific populariser.

Other Comments

Some of his papers are held by the Society of Antiquaries and others by the University Library, Cambridge.

Contributor

Barry Shurlock with input from Dr John Crook. Revised 31 12 22, with comments by Elizabeth Stazicker. Hon Archivist, Ely Cathedral.

Key Words

Winchester Cathedral, cathedral close, Lockburn, architecture, war memorials, Ely

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