Francis Xavier Velarde (1897–1960)

Architect born in West Derby, Liverpool, to a father of Spanish origin. Following military service during the First World War, he studied at the Liverpool School of Architecture under Charles Reilly, 1920–24. He was awarded the Liverpool Architectural Society’s Honan travelling scholarship in 1923 and graduated as a Bachelor in Architecture in 1924. He taught at the School from 1928. At about this time he became a junior partner in the Liverpool architectural practice, Weighman, Bullen & Velarde, subsequently establishing his own practice, F.X. Velarde & Partners. In 1925 he had been elected an Associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), and was elected a Fellow in 1935; in 1937 he was awarded the RIBA Godwin and Wimperis Medal. He was one of the leading church architects in Merseyside and north-west England, concentrating on Catholic churches, on a number of which he engaged the sculptor Herbert Tyson Smith (1883–1972), giving him great freedom in the design and execution of the sculptures. Velarde’s first church was St Matthew, Clubmoor, of 1927–30, and his last, Holy Cross, Birkenhead, of 1959. Others include St Gabriel, Blackburn (1932–34); St Monica, Bootle (1935–36), with three Tyson Smith angels on the west tower; and Our Lady of Pity, Greasby (1951–52), and the English Martyrs, Wallasey (1952–53), these last two with Tyson Smith Pietàs on their west towers. Reilly remarked, ‘[Velarde] is in my opinion the most brilliant of the younger men today who are building the churches of this new church-building age. He combines with a good sense of form a highly imaginative and creative mind.’ For Reilly, Velarde had ‘something vital and of our time’, and his buildings had an austere beauty ‘beyond the powers of all but a few’. Velarde’s friend, the Liverpool architect Herbert Thwarle, observed: ‘shorn of all but the essentials, his works have the virtue of simplicity’. Much later, his austere brick façades and arches were much admired by Nikolaus Pevsner.

Bibliography: AHRnet: Biographical Dictionary of British and Irish Architects 1800–1950; R.F. Bisson, The Sandon Studios Society and the Arts, Liverpool, 1965, pp. 132–34; The Builder, 6 January 1961, pp. 22–23; E. Morris and E. Roberts, Public Sculpture of Cheshire and Merseyside, Liverpool, 2012, pp. xvi, xxiv–xxv, 43–44; N. Pevsner, South Lancashire (The Buildings of England), Harmondsworth, 1969, pp. 50–51, 93, 216; S.J. Poole, ‘A Critical Analysis of the Work of Herbert Tyson Smith, Sculptor and Designer’, unpublished Liverpool University PhD thesis, 1995, pp. 47, 242–43, 283–85; C.H. Reilly, ‘Some Recent Churches’, Architectural Review, vol. 77 (1935), pp. 163–65; C.H. Reilly, Scaffolding in the Sky, London, 1938, p. 232; J. Sharples et al, Charles Reilly and the Liverpool School of Architecture (Walker Art Gallery), Liverpool, 1996, pp. 178–79; D. Wilkinson and A. Crompton, F. X. Velarde, Liverpool, 2020.

Emma Roberts, 2012; revised, Terry Cavanagh, October 2025