Practice and Private Life
Prior only stayed a few months further with Shaw on his return from Ilkley. In 1880 he began his own practice at 17 Southampton Road, in close proximity to Shaw and others of his former employees. Reginald Blomfield leased an office on the second floor. Prior occupied the building until 1885 and again in 1889-94 and 1901.
His early commissions were are primarily located in areas where he had connections, in Harrow and around Bridport in Dorset, where his father had lived and his mother's relatives, the Templers, were prominent and in Cambridge where he had been at University. The opening of the Metropolitan Railway to Harrow in 1880 and his connections with Harrow in particular encouraged Prior to work in the Harrow area.
His work in Dorset was to lead to his marriage. Whilst designing Pier Terrace at West Bay, Prior met Louisa Maunsell, the daughter of the vicar of nearby Symondsbury. They were married in Symmondsbury Church on 11 August 1885. Mervyn Macatney was best man.
The Priors lived in 6 Bloomsbury Square from 1885-1889. Here his daughters Laura and Christobel were born. Prior leased Bridgefoot, Iver, Bucks as a country residence in 1889, but on the birth of his second daughter it was leased to the architect G.F. Bodley.
In 1894 Prior moved to 10 Melina Place, St John's Wood, next door to Voysey, resulting in the development of a long term friendship and exchange of ideas between the two men, to the extent that Voysey is recorded as having painted the roofs of Prior’s seminal Model for a Dorsetshire Cottage
Prior moved to Sussex in 1907 initially living in an early 18th century house at 7 East Pallant, Chichester. In 1908 he bought an 18th century house in Mount Lane with an adjacent warehouse which he converted to provide a studio. He continued the London practice as 1 Hare Court, Temple until the middle of the First World War. On his appointment as Slade Professor at Cambridge Prior also bought a house, Fariview in Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge.
After the First World War Prior unsuccessfully tried to restart his practice with H.C. Hughes. He started a commission for a house outside Cambridge but fell into a dispute with the client over the materials for the boundary hedge. Hughes took over the job as his own. Prior's scheme for the ciborium at Norwich Cathedral was dropped deeply disappointing him.
In the post war years he only undertook the design of war memorials at Maiden Newton in Dorset and for Cambridge Union Rugby Club.
Read more about this topic: Edward Schroeder Prior
Famous quotes containing the words private life, practice and, practice, private and/or life:
“When I think of the gold-diggers and the Mormons, the slaves and the slave-holders and the flibustiers, I naturally dream of a glorious private life. No, I am not patriotic.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Nonwhite and working-class women, if they are ever to identify with the organized women’s movement, must see their own diverse experiences reflected in the practice and policy statements of these predominantly white middle-class groups.”
—Kimberly Crenshaw (b. 1959)
“She, too, would now swim down the river of matrimony with a beautiful name, and a handle to it, as the owner of a fine family property. Women’s rights was an excellent doctrine to preach, but for practice could not stand the strain of such temptation.”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)
“Mens sana in men’s sauna, in the flush
Of health and toilets, private and corporal glee,”
—Anthony Hecht (b. 1923)
“He had never learned to live without delight. And he would have to learn to, just as, in a Prohibition country, he supposed he would have to learn to live without sherry. Theoretically he knew that life is possible, may be even pleasant, without joy, without passionate griefs. But it had never occurred to him that he might have to live like that.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)