Harold Chalton Bradshaw was one of the many eminent architects
that the city of Liverpool has produced. He was born on 15th
February 1893 to working-class parents John Henry and Welsh-born Ada. (Her
maiden name being Chalton all their children carried this as their middle name
and in Harold’s case it was by this name that he was generally known). His
father was a clerk in a furnishings business and the family lived at 16 White
Rock Street L6. They subsequently lived at 17 Gresham Street L7 and by 1911,
with six children and John Henry having advanced to the position of ‘furniture
dealer manager’ they were living in the salubrious surroundings of Wavertree at
30 Heathfield Road. By this time H. Chalton Bradshaw was an 18 year-old
architecture student.
Bradshaw studied at the Liverpool School of Architecture
under Charles Reilly and in his autobiography (Scaffolding in the Sky)
he recalls his delight at his student gaining the first English Prix de Rome, a
scholarship of £200 p.a. to study at the British School in Rome. Reilly served
on the Faculty of Architecture for the Rome school but as Bradshaw was ‘his’
candidate he kept away from the judging. Once his success was confirmed Reilly
lost no time in extolling the young man’s exceptional qualities and abilities
and predicting a great future. Apparently some of his colleagues were less than
convinced that a ‘provincial’ such as Bradshaw could aspire to the heights of
the professions, so Reilly was delighted to note (writing in 1938) that his protegé
was “now Secretary to the Royal Fine Arts Commission, the friend of Prime
Ministers and the best teller of stories in the Athenæum…I
expect soon to see his CBE turned into a KBE.It certainly should be.”
The Rome Prize certainly turned out to be the launching pad
of a very successful career, sadly cut short by his untimely death aged just 50
in 1943, and before Reilly’s predicted knighthood had been conferred.
Some of his most notable works were undertaken for the
Commonwealth War Graves Commission. They included the Cambrai Memorial for the
Missing in France, the Ploegsteert Memorial and Cemetery in Belgium and the
Guards Memorial erected in 1926 in St. James Park.
He became the first secretary of the Royal Fine Arts
Commission in 1924. He collapsed and died at his office in Burlington Gardens
in October 1943 and was buried at the Church of All Saints, Horsey-next-the-Sea
in Norfolk. There is a wall tablet to his memory in the church.
Bradshaw married Mary Taylor, an archaeologist, in 1918 and
they had three sons, one of whom, Anthony, became Professor of Botany at
Liverpool University and was the first person to be made a Liverpool Citizen of
Honour in 2008.
