Robert Williams (architect)

This article is about the Welsh architect. For the Canadian-American architect, see Robert Edmund Williams.

Robert Williams
Born(1848-01-27)27 January 1848
Ystradowen, Glamorgan, Wales
Died16 October 1918(1918-10-16) (aged 70)
OccupationArchitect

Robert Williams (27 January 1848 – 16 October 1918) was a Welsh architect and social campaigner. Born in South Wales, he studied architecture in London and established a practice there in 1887. Williams' work showed a Gothic Revival influence and included public and educational buildings in Wales and London including Wheatsheaf Hall and Cowbridge Girls School. From 1914 he practised in Egypt, constructing Cairo's largest shop for the Davies Bryan Company, as well as a number of other commercial and public buildings.

Williams was a member of the Independent Labour Party and sat on the executive committees of the Land Nationalisation Society and the London Reform Union. He was elected a London County Council councillor in 1901 and advocated for more stringent housing standards. Williams wrote several books on housing and advocated for internal toilets at a time when outdoor privies were the norm. His daughter Margaret Travers Symons was also a social campaigner and suffragette.

Early life and British architecture

Williams was born in Ystradowen, Glamorgan, on 27 January 1848. He was the second son of carpenter Rees Williams and his wife Mary (née Evans). He was educated at the Eagle Academy, a private school on Eagle Lane, Cowbridge, before being apprenticed to a building contractor. In 1873 he went to study architecture and building construction at the South Kensington School of Art where he won several school prizes and a national medal.[1] Rather than being articled to an architect's design office Williams took the unusual route into the profession of becoming a site-based clerk of works. He undertook this role for the improvements to the Marquess of Lothian's Blickling Hall made by James Piers St Aubyn and Maurice Bingham Adams. Afterwards he worked for Waller, Son & Wood of Gloucester.[1]

Williams was married to Margaret Griffiths and the couple had two children, Inigo Rees (born in Llantrisant in 1876) and Margaret Ann (born in Paddington in 1879). By 1881, when Williams was living in Coggeshall in Essex, his wife had died. He remarried in 1883 to Elizabeth Ann Kettle, at Braintree.[1]

By 1887 Williams was living in Haslemere, Surrey.[2] On 7 November he was admitted as an associate to the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), allowing him to set up his own architectural practice in London.[3][1] Williams's main work was in public structures and educational institutions. He carried out several commissions in his native South Wales, including Pontypool Market Hall (1893–94), Cowbridge Girls School (1895–96) and Pontypool and District Hospital (1903). Works in London include the Wheatsheaf Hall, Vauxhall (1896) and the People's Hall, West Kensington (1901). His work shows a Gothic Revival influence, though with an emphasis on amenity.[1]

Williams became a fellow of RIBA in 1896, by which time he was living in Harringay, London.[2] Williams was also a member of the Cambrian Archaeological Association and drew sketches of their 1897 investigations in Cardiganshire, that were published in Archaeologia Cambrensis and The Builder. He campaigned for conservation of historic buildings, complaining in the local press about unsympathetic modifications and new-builds.[1] By 1905 he resided in Fleet Street, London, and in 1914 he was at Hook in Hampshire.[2]

Social campaigning

Williams was a fervent socialist and counted socialist politicians Keir Hardie and Frank Smith as friends. Williams's daughter, Margaret Travers Symons, became Hardie's secretary. A suffragette she became the first woman to speak in the House of Commons after bursting into the chamber during a debate.[1]

Williams stood unsuccessfully for a seat as county councillor for Woolwich in the 1898 London County Council election.[4] He was successful in winning a seat at Lambeth North in the 1901 London County Council election, representing the Progressive Party.[5][6] As a councillor Williams pressed for the LCC to adopt more stringent housing standards, including adopting the Fabian Society's "three rooms and a scullery" minimum. The LCC did not agree with all his proposals but did undertake to reject one-room tenements in favour of multi-roomed, self-contained flats.[7][4] Williams was a member of the Independent Labour Party and sat on the executive committees of the Land Nationalisation Society and the London Reform Union.[4]

Williams published a series of booklets on the living conditions of the poor and on building reform. He lamented the poor living conditions of miners, despite the fortunes made by the mine owners. Williams published a book, The Collier's House or Every Collier his own Architect, in 1893 (in English and Welsh) containing drawings showing improved housing for coal miners, particularly in the Welsh Valleys. He also wrote on conditions in London, publishing London Rookeries and Collier's Slums: a Plea for More Breathing Room in 1893 and More Light and Air for Londoners - the Effect of the New Streets and Buildings Bill on the Health of the People in 1894. Williams wrote The Face of the Poor or the Crowding of London's Labourers in 1897 and, with socialist politician Fred Knee, The Labourer and His Cottage in 1905.[1][2] Williams' cottage designs were unusual for the time in showing internal toilets, at a time when outdoor privies were the norm.[1] In 1906 he published Bond in Brickwork.[3]

Egypt

From 1914 Williams practised in Cairo, Egypt. He was drawn there by a commission for the Welsh-owned Davies Bryan Company, a retailer. Williams refurbished one of the company's shops in Alexandria and built a large shop in Cairo.[1] The Cairo shop, the largest in the city at that time, was a large structure of red Aberdeen granite and Somerset Doulting freestone. It had a strong Welsh influence, displaying the emblem and motto ("Y Gwir yn Erbyn y Byd" Welsh: "Truth against the world") of the Eisteddfod.[8]

Williams designed several other prominent buildings in Egypt such as the Bible House in Port Said, the soldiers' home and Marconi Tower in Cairo and banks in Port Said and Tanta. He wrote Notes on the English Bond, intended as an educational book for local masons and published in English, French and Arabic.[1] From Christmas 1916, he worked with Yale and Harvard expedition to Upper Egypt under the American archaeologist George Andrew Reisner. Williams made architectural drawings of structures at Nuri (in modern-day Sudan), including the pyramid of Aramatle-qo and, from a raft moored in the Nile in March 1917, the entrance of the pyramid of Taharqa.[9][2]

Williams died on 16 October 1918 in Cairo and is buried in the city's Protestant Cemetery. Williams, who was widely travelled in Europe, Asia and North Africa, collected a library which now forms the core of the architecture rare book collection at Cardiff University.[1]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l "Williams, Robert (1848 - 1918), architect, author and social reformer". Dictionary of Welsh Biography. National Library of Wales. Archived from the original on 15 February 2022. Retrieved 7 September 2022.
  2. ^ a b c d e "Williams, Robert 1848 - 1918". Biographical Dictionary of British and Irish Architects 1800-1950. AHRnet. Retrieved 28 October 2025.
  3. ^ a b Directory of British architects, 1834-1900. Mansell: London. 1993. p. 998. ISBN 978-0-7201-2158-2.
  4. ^ a b c Bowie, Duncan (12 March 2018). The Radical and Socialist Tradition in British Planning: From Puritan colonies to garden cities. Routledge. p. 296. ISBN 978-1-317-01833-9. Archived from the original on 21 September 2022. Retrieved 7 September 2022.
  5. ^ Alderman, Geoffrey (1989). London Jewry and London Politics, 1889-1986. Cambridge University Press Archive. p. 155. ISBN 978-0-415-02204-0.
  6. ^ Stapleton, Julia (1 August 2024). G K Chesterton at the Daily News, Part I, vol 2: Literature, Liberalism and Revolution, 1901-1913. Taylor & Francis. p. 89. ISBN 978-1-040-24885-0.
  7. ^ Wohl, Anthony (28 July 2017). The Eternal Slum: Housing and Social Policy in Victorian London. Routledge. p. 258. ISBN 978-1-351-30403-0.
  8. ^ Cooke, Neil; Daubney, Vanessa (24 July 2017). Lost and Now Found: Explorers, Diplomats and Artists in Egypt and the Near East. Archaeopress Publishing Ltd. pp. 32–33. ISBN 978-1-78491-628-2. Archived from the original on 21 September 2022. Retrieved 7 September 2022.
  9. ^ Manuelian, Peter Der (2023). Walking Among Pharaohs: George Reisner and the Dawn of Modern Egyptology. Oxford University Press. pp. 390, 393. ISBN 978-0-19-762893-5.
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