Brand names

GLEEDS

With a grandfather and cousin already working in the building trade, Richard Gleed was born with the trade in his blood.

He joined the Architectural Association in November 1876 and worked in various locations including Chancery Lane and Adelaide House near London Bridge. He offered “surveying services including the measurement of bills of quantities” and later added “architectural services”.

At that time many architects commonly meausured and costed buildings as well as designing them, but a shrewd few realised there was a business opportunity in specialising in the former two activities and in 1885 Gleeds was established.

When Pearl Insurance Company announced a takeover of Adelaide House in 1898, Gleed finally moved into his own office of 8-9 Martin Lane.

His first business investment was the installation of a single telephone line costing nine shillings. His all male staff (they didn’t employ women until after the Second World War) consisted of his good friend Arthur Herbert Belcher who had joined him in 1893.

He campaigned for a greater understanding and recognition of QSs and fought to improve communication within the building industry by fostering an agreement to a standard method of measuring quantities. He was a fellow of the Surveyor’s Institution (forerunner of the RICS), became a member of the Quantity Surveyor’s Committee on its formation in 1904 and was its chairman from 1923-25 until the age of 74. When the last of the Gleed family retired in the 1960s, three generations had served on the standard method of measurement committee of the RICS. He died aged 79.

Did you know?

Gleed played a major part in the formation of RICS. His colleague Belcher delivered a paper on The Economics of Housing the Poor where he suggested omitting the plaster and lath in ceilings and cutting out the drainage – all in a bid to cut costs.

CYRIL SWEETT

In 1928 Sweett opened his first office above a hat shop based in the Strand.

Originally operating as a quantity surveying practice, he became involved in a number of landmark projects such as the De la Warr Pavilion in Bexhill designed by Mendelsohn and Chermayeff.

Mendelsohn and Sweett went on to become active founding members of the Mars Group, which had an important influence on the modernist architecture movement. Sweett was the only non-architect in the group.

He instigated a strong client focus while maintaining a “family culture” within the company.

Sweett was described as a family man who enjoyed spending time with his one and only daughter. In his spare time he enjoyed sailing and was commodore of a royal yacht club.

He had a taste for fine wine and was rumoured to have had a superb art collection. He was a Master of Painter Stainers livery and alderman of the City of London and was lay sheriff to the Mayor of London.

Did you know?
Sweett is reported to have invented the cost plan and was president of the QS division of the RICS.

CURRIE & BROWN

Arthur Lorimer Currie began working at his father’s firm at 23 training as a measurer. The determined Scotsman went to evening classes at the Glasgow and West of Scotland Technical College where he was appointed president of the Architectural Craftsmen’s Society.

He also became an associate of the Glasgow Institute of Measurers. Ten years later he went into partnership with his father and brother. The firm was known as John Currie & Sons.

He broke away from his father’s firm to work as QS for another familiar name – Robert McAlpine Bros – on new construction for “war purposes” before taking the brave decision to go it alone.

In 1919 Currie opened his own QS business in Glasgow forming his first short-lived partnership with JGW Menzies, which ended in 1926.

Andrew Brown began working for Arthur when he was just 14. Despite the 32-year age gap their friendship evolved into a successful business partnership in 1935.

Brown continued to expand the business following Currie’s death in 1942. Brown was a member of many groups, including the Royal Sanitary Institute, the Incorporated Sanitary Association of Scotland, and the Council of the Faculty of Surveyors. He also remained true to his Scottish roots and became a Deacon of the Deacons of Free Presses Society
in Glasgow. Both men passed away at the age of 68.

Did you know?
Currie’s prize cabinet included:
1893 First prize for his examination in the Glasgow Institute of Measurers and again in 1897

1903 Won the essay prize for his work on
the architecture of the Renaissance in Italy, from the Glasgow Technical College, Architectural Craftsmen’s Society.

FRANKLIN + ANDREWS

Thomas Franklin, a father of six, was born in 1831 in Colchester. In the late 1840s he was working as an apprentice in Lambeth but in 1953 became a managing clerk at the Southwark building firm of Thomas Rider and Son.

During the following years Thomas described himself as an architect and in 1859 set up his own business in architecture and surveying. He worked from home until 1862, when he moved into an office at 5 Adelaide Place, part of the Adelaide Buildings.

He also hired an assistant – 20-year-old John Andrews.
It is thought the two met while working together at Riders. Born in Norwood, near Crystal Palace, south London, Andrews came from a well-off family.

A husband and father of two daughters, it is thought Andrews acquired practical knowledge of building and surveying while working at Riders. In 1886 Franklin and Andrews became partners to form one of the oldest QS businesses in the industry.

The architect John Belcher was an office neighbour of Franklin + Andrews in the Adelaide Buildings. Five years later the firm worked on Belcher’s No. 1 Poultry at the other end of the same block.

Andrews left the partnership in 1891. The circumstances are unknown but at the time he was 49 and continued as a surveyor. Franklin retired towards the end of the century. Both men were members of RIBA.

Did you know?
Richard Norman Shaw, one of the most influential late Victorian architects, used
F+A regularly on projects including the
New Scotland Yard offices in 1886.

GARDINER & THEOBALD

G&T’s history stems back to the mid-19th century. In 1840 William Gardiner formed his practice using the two rooms on the ground floor of his house in Montague Street in London. In 1848, he took on George Bell and set up an office in 110 Great Russell Street in Bloomsbury, London.

At the time, the firm practised as architects and surveyors. In 1873 Gardiner was joined by his son Edward and took Henry Theobald into partnership, linking their names together to create the brand name used today.

The firm began evolving into a quantity surveying practice when John Theobald joined his father in 1896. Thoebald was elected as president of the RICS in 1936. Under his stewardship during the Second World War the firm expanded, opening new offices to serve the first generation of new towns introduced by the government. Major commissions such as the Isle of Grain Oil Refinery and the Shell Centre on London’s South Bank made it necessary to expand beyond its headquarters now in the Bedford Estate, which still remains its London HQ.