| Biographical Note | William Harrison Cowlishaw was a British architect and an Assistant Architect for the Imperial War Graves Commission in France.
He was born in 1870. He trained with Stockdale Harrison of Leicester and Balfour Turner. Cowlishaw was very much involved with the Arts & Crafts movement and was also a calligrapher. One of his most famous works was the 'Cloisters' in Letchworth Garden City, Hertfordshire. .
During the First World War, he served in the London Ambulance Brigade of the Red Cross, where he met Charles Holden; the two would forge a professional relationship which continued for many years after. At the end of the war, Cowlishaw was commissioned by the Imperial War Graves Commission to design cemeteries and memorials across France and Belgium under the direction of Sir Frederick G. Kenyon, the Commission's advisor on architecture.
As Assistant Architect in France, Cowlishaw was responsible for the design of 235 sites, including the impressive Pozieres British Cemetery and its Memorial to the Missing on the Somme. Among the other cemeteries designed by him are the plot within Zillebeke Churchyard, Grootebeek British Cemetery, Meath Cemetery, Villers–Guislain and Joncourt British Cemetery. He also directed the Commission architectural office at St Omer.
He left the Commission in November 1931 before assisting Holden on London University.
William Cowlishaw died in 1957. |