Architect William Whitfield

Whitfield was born in Stockton-on-Tees into a coal-owning family and studied architecture at King's College, Newcastle (later the Newcastle University School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape), where he was admitted by a special dispensation at the unusually early age of 15, and where he later studied Town Planning after the Second World War.

Whitfield designed the Glasgow University Library (1968) and the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery Extension at the University of Glasgow (1962–81), as well as an extension to the Newcastle University Students' Union building (1964) and University Theatre (now unrecognisable and called the Northern Stage). He designed the Business School and the Science Library at Durham University (both now extended). In 1970 a major bush-hammered concrete Brutalist extension to Whitfield's design was opened at Arthur Beresford Pite and John Belcher's 1890-1893 Institute of Chartered Accountants headquarters, Chartered Accountants' Hall, including a new entrance; as well as the 1987 Department of Health building, Richmond House in Richmond Terrace, Whitehall, London. He designed the Chapter House at St Albans Cathedral, the Catheral Lodge in the close at Canterbury Cathedral and the new Mappa Mundi Library at Hereford Cathedral in a free gothic style.

 

With Andrew Lockwood he designed the neo-Palladian mansion Tusmore Park in Oxfordshire for the Saudi Arabian financier Wafic Saïd.

He was Surveyor of the Fabric of St Paul's Cathedral from 1985 to 1990, architect for the restoration of Christ Church Spitalfields, a Commissioner of English Heritage, Commissioner of the Royal Fine Art Commission and a Trustee of the British Museum. He was awarded CBE in the 1976 Birthday Honours and knighted in the 1993 New Year Honours.