Lionel Godfrey Pearson (1879–1953)

Architect born in Liverpool, the son of Revd Samuel Pearson. After studying at Liverpool University School of Architecture, 1897–99, Pearson was articled to Woodhouse & Willoughby, of Manchester, 1899–1900. He relocated to London and worked as an assistant in the offices of, successively, Edward Schroeder Prior (1901), William Flockhart (1902) and Charles Harold Cooper (1903). In 1904 he gained employment as an assistant in the offices of Adams & Holden, which became Adams, Holden & Pearson on his elevation to partner in 1913 (partnership dissolved, 1940). From 1914 to 1918 he served with the Royal Army Medical Corps in France, resuming practice in 1919. He had been elected a Licentiate of the Royal Institute of British Architects (LRIBA) in 1910 and was elected a Fellow (FRIBA) in 1921; he was awarded the RIBA London Bronze Medal in 1929. In 1932 he married Melinda Elizabeth Osborne. During Pearson’s early years at Adams & Holden, the practice designed and built the British Medical Association Building, London (1907–08), which featured 18 over-life-size niche figures by Jacob Epstein. This was to be the start of a long working relationship with the sculptor, for in 1912 Adams & Holden provided the architectural component for Epstein’s Tomb of Oscar Wilde in Père Lachaise cemetery, Paris; in 1923–25, Pearson, working on his own account, designed the setting for Epstein’s W.H. Hudson Memorial, Hyde Park; and in 1927–29, Adams, Holden & Pearson engaged Epstein, along with Eric Gill, Henry Moore, Allan Gairdner Wyon, Eric Aumonier, A.H. Gerrard and Samuel Rabinovich, to design and carve the figure sculptures for their London Underground headquarters building. Pearson also designed the pedestal and podium for Charles Sergeant Jagger’s Royal Artillery Memorial, Hyde Park Corner (1921–25). In 1926, in collaboration with Stanley Spencer, he designed the Sandham Memorial Chapel, Burghclere, Hampshire, ostensibly a memorial to Lieutenant H.W. Sandham who had died from an illness contracted during the First World War in Macedonia, but conceived specifically as a receptacle for Spencer’s cycle of paintings based on his own experiences in the Royal Army Medical Corps at Beaufort War Hospital, Bristol, and subsequent war service in that same campaign.

Bibliography: AHRnet: Biographical Dictionary of British and Irish Architects 1800-1950; T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Kensington and Chelsea with Westminster South-West, Watford, 2023, pp. 278, 279, 280, 281; T. Friedman, ‘The Hyde Park Atrocity’. Epstein’s Rima: creation and controversy, Leeds, 1988, pp. 12–13, 14, 15, 23; The Times, 20 March 1953, p. 10 (obit.); Victorian Society (Manchester Group): Architects of Greater Manchester 1800–1940; P. Ward-Jackson, Public Sculpture of Historic Westminster. Volume 1, Liverpool, 2011, p. 96; Who Was Who (published online: 1 December 2007).

Terry Cavanagh, August 2024