Patrick Abercrombie

• Honorific Prefix — Sir • Name — Patrick Abercrombie • Honorific Suffix — FRIBA • Birth Name — Leslie Patrick Abercrombie • Born — 6 June 1879 • Birthplace — Ashton upon Mersey, Cheshire, England • Died — 23 March 1957 • Place of death — Aston Tirrold, Oxfordshire, England • Occupation — Architect, Planner, Professor, Theorist. • Known for — Creating London • Children — 2 • Awards — RIBA Royal Gold Medal 1946, AIA Gold Medal 1950 • Honours — Knighted in 1945

Patrick Abercrombie was born in Ashton-upon-Mersey, the seventh of nine children of Sarah and William Abercrombie, a stockbroker and businessman who had wide artistic interests, particularly of the Arts and Crafts school. In 1887, the family moved to a new home in Sale, designed by a Leicester architect, Joseph Goddard, with interiors influenced by designer John Aldam Heaton. He spent a year at the Realschule in Lucerne, Switzerland.

In 1897, he was articled to the architect Charles Henry Heathcote, while studying at the Manchester School of Art. After four years, he started work under Arnold Thornely in Liverpool, and set up home in Birkenhead, which remained his home until 1936. After a year working in Chester with architect Philip Lockwood, son of renowned architect T.M Lockwood, in 1907 he was offered a post as junior lecturer and studio instructor at the University of Liverpool School of Architecture. In 1915 year was appointed as Lever Professor of Civic Design at Liverpool, soon becoming a nationally-known authority on town planning and the garden city movement. In 1920 he went into partnership with architect Philip Lockwood and F.C. Saxon, as Lockwood Abercrombie and Saxon, a firm which still operates in Chester as Lovelock Mitchell, one of the world's oldest architecture firms. He was later appointed as Professor of Town Planning at University College London, and gradually asserted his dominance as an architect of international renown, which came about through the replanning of Plymouth, Hull, Bath, Edinburgh and Bournemouth, among others. Of his post-war replanning of Plymouth, Sir Simon Jenkins has written: • Poor Plymouth. It was badly blitzed in the Second World War and then subjected to slash and burn by its city fathers. The modern visitor will find it a maze of concrete blocks, ill-sited towers and ruthless road schemes. Most of this damage was done by one man, Patrick Abercrombie, in the 1950s. The old Barbican district would, in France or Germany, have had its façades restored or rebuilt. Here new buildings were inserted with no feeling for the texture of the old lanes and alleys. Throughout his life, he devoted his time to civic bodies. He was a founding member of the Town Planning Institute (TPI) formed in 1914 and became its president in 1925. In the 1920s and 1930s, Abercrombie developed a specialty in regional planning. He became chairman of the Council for the Preservation of Rural England in 1926, and was on the Council of the Town and Country Planning Association. In 1937, he served as President of the Geographical Association. His Presidential Address was entitled 'Geography – the Basis of Planning'.

He is best known for the post-Second World War replanning of London. In 1943 he created the County of London Plan, and in 1944 the Greater London Plan, together commonly referred to as the Abercrombie Plan. The latter document was an extended and more thorough product than the 1943 publication. Abercrombie conceived the Ringways scheme of London in 1944, proposing four ringroads around Greater London. In 1945 he published A Plan for the City & County of Kingston upon Hull, with the assistance of Sir Edwin Lutyens. Lutyens had died the year before publication whilst much of the plan was being finalised, and the plan was ultimately rejected by the Councillors of Hull.

From the Abercrombie Plan came the New Towns movement which included the building of Harlow and Crawley and the largest 'out-county' estate, Harold Hill in north-east London. He produced the Clyde Valley Regional Plan in 1946 with Robert Matthew that proposed the new towns of East Kilbride and Cumbernauld. In 1949 he published with Richard Nickson a plan for the redevelopment of Warwick, which proposed demolition of almost all the town's Victorian housing stock and construction of a large inner ring road.

During the postwar years, Abercrombie was commissioned by the British government to redesign Hong Kong, for which he submitted plans in 1947. In 1956 he was commissioned by Haile Selassie to draw up plans for the capital of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa; he submitted the plan in 1957 but its major aspects were not carried out.

Abercrombie married Emily Maud Gordon in 1908; they had one son and one daughter. He was widowed in 1942. Abercrombie was the brother of the poet and critic Lascelles Abercrombie, and uncle to Michael Abercrombie.