Edward Schroeder Prior - Practice and Private Life

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.