29 Facts About Edwin Lutyens

Edwin Lutyens designed many English country houses, war memorials and public buildings.

Edwin Lutyens played an instrumental role in the construction of New Delhi, which would later on serve as the seat of the Government of India.

Edwin Lutyens was elected Master of the Art Workers' Guild in 1933.

Edwin Lutyens was named after a friend of his father, the painter and sculptor Edwin Henry Landseer.

Edwin Lutyens studied architecture at South Kensington School of Art, London, from 1885 to 1887.

Edwin Lutyens began his own practice in 1888, his first commission being a private house at Crooksbury, Farnham, Surrey.

Edwin Lutyens's fame grew largely through the popularity of the new lifestyle magazine Country Life created by Edward Hudson, which featured many of his house designs.

Edwin Lutyens's commissions were of a varied nature from private houses to two churches for the new Hampstead Garden Suburb in London to Julius Drewe's Castle Drogo near Drewsteignton in Devon and on to his contributions to India's new imperial capital, New Delhi.

Edwin Lutyens designed the Hyderabad House for the last Nizam of Hyderabad, as his Delhi palace and planned the layout for the Janpath and Rajpath roads.

Edwin Lutyens designed many other war memorials, and others are based on or inspired by Edwin Lutyens's designs.

Edwin Lutyens heavily influenced Sigurd Frosterus when he designed Vanajanlinna Manor in Finland.

Edwin Lutyens was knighted in 1918 and elected a Royal Academician in March 1920.

Edwin Lutyens was commissioned in 1929 to design a new Roman Catholic cathedral in Liverpool.

Edwin Lutyens worked on the plan with Sir Patrick Abercrombie and they are credited as its co-authors.

In 1907, Edwin Lutyens designed Tranarossan House, located just north of Downings on the Rosguill Peninsula on the north coast of County Donegal.

In undertaking this project, Edwin Lutyens invented his own new order of classical architecture, which has become known as the Delhi Order and was used by him for several designs in England, such as Campion Hall, Oxford.

The Delhi Order columns at the front entrance of the palace have bells carved into them, which, it has been suggested, Edwin Lutyens had designed with the idea that as the bells were silent the British rule would never come to an end.

When composing the plans for New Delhi, Edwin Lutyens planned for the new city to lie southwest of the walled city of Shahjahanbad.

In recognition of his architectural accomplishments for the British Raj, Edwin Lutyens was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire on 1 January 1930.

In spite of his monumental work in India, Edwin Lutyens believed that the peoples of the Indian sub-continent were less civilised and less intelligent than Europeans, although these views were common at the time among many of his contemporaries.

Edwin Lutyens's reconstruction was commissioned by Jacobo Fitz-James Stuart, 17th Duke of Alba.

The Duke had been in contact with Edwin Lutyens while serving as the Spanish ambassador to the Court of St James's.

Between 1915 and 1928, Edwin Lutyens produced designs for a new palace for the Duke of Alba's younger brother, Hernando Fitz-James Stuart, 18th Duke of Penaranda.

Edwin Lutyens married Lady Emily Bulwer-Lytton on 4 August 1897 at Knebworth, Hertfordshire.

Edwin Lutyens was third daughter of Edith and the 1st Earl of Lytton, a former Viceroy of India.

Edwin Lutyens died on 1 January 1944 and was cremated at East Finchley Crematorium in north London, known as St Marylebone Crematorium.

Edwin Lutyens's ashes were interred in the crypt of St Paul's Cathedral, beneath a memorial designed by his friend and fellow architect William Curtis Green.

Edwin Lutyens received the RIBA Royal Gold Medal in 1921, and the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal in 1925.

In November 2015 the British government announced that all 44 of Edwin Lutyens's surviving First World War memorials in Britain had now been listed on the advice of Historic England, and were therefore all protected by law.