1839 - 1922

Architect. Born in Southwark, son of an ironmonger, he showed an aptitude for drawing whilst at White’s School, Reading. From 1856 to 1860 he was articled to a London architect, Samuel Hewitt, and in 1857 joined the Royal Academy Schools, where he won the Gold Medal in 1859. In 1861 he went on a sketching tour of France and Germany, and on his return set up in partnership with a fellow Royal Academy student, Thomas Vaughan. Amongst other work, this partnership saw the production of George’s first country house, Rousdon, Devon (1874). After Vaughan’s early death, George formed his next partnership in 1876 with Harold Ainsworth Peto, son of the public works contractor, Sir Morton Peto. This partnership, in which George performed the artistic side of the business, benefited from the wide sphere of contacts of the Peto family. As well as continuing to build country houses in a variety of styles, including Queen Anne, Elizabethan, Jacobean, Tudor and neo-Georgian, the partnership was responsible for some distinctive residential developments in London, particularly Harrington and Collingham Gardens (1880-88), where George indulged his taste for richly ornamented terracotta building, inspired by Flemish and German town houses of the Renaissance period. After Peto’s retirement from the partnership in 1892, George entered on his last partnership, with Alfred Bowman Yeates. George was one of the five prominent architects who competed for the transformation of the Mall, in connection with the Victoria Memorial, in 1901. He was President of the Royal Institute of British Architects from 1908 to 1910, and was knighted in 1911.