14 Facts About Ninian Comper

Sir John Ninian Comper was a Scottish architect, one of the last of the great Gothic Revival architects.

Ninian Comper is celebrated for his use of colour, iconography and emphasis on churches as a setting for liturgy.

The Ninian Comper family were of Norman origin and settled as yeoman farmers in Pulborough, Sussex at the Norman Conquest; nevertheless, Ninian Comper's father upheld a romantic notion that the family were descended from noble Huguenots.

Ninian Comper's father moved from Sussex to Scotland as a young man in search of work as a schoolmaster with a view to becoming a priest.

John Ninian Comper became a significant figure within the Scottish Church, remembered for his ministry in the slums of Aberdeen and as an important figure in the northern High Church movement.

Ninian Comper was educated at Kingston College, Aberdeen, Glenalmond School in Perthshire and studied drawing for a year at the Ruskin School of Art in Oxford before moving to London to serve articles with Charles Eamer Kempe, and in 1883 to George Frederick Bodley and Thomas Garner.

The eldest, John-Baptiste Sebastian Ninian Comper, became an architect, designing many churches for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Northampton.

Ninian Comper had a studio nearby at Knights Hill, close to the cemetery at West Norwood.

Ninian Comper completely restored and partially redesigned the church at Church of St Giles, Wimborne St Giles, Dorset, which had suffered near total destruction following a fire in 1908.

Ninian Comper designed a number of remarkable altar screens, inspired by medieval originals.

Ninian Comper was capable of innovative planning; his Church of St Mary-in-the-Baum, Rochdale responds to a restricted urban site by placing the "sensationally high" nave on the well-lit southern side of the building, with the aisle on the north side.

Ninian Comper designed the altar, frontal, screen, and the stained glass windows.

Ninian Comper's body was brought back to Norwood for cremation at West Norwood Cemetery.

Ninian Comper's ashes were then interred beneath the windows he designed in Westminster Abbey.