Guardian Angels Church, Mile End, London
Frederick Arthur Walters was born in Brompton on 5 February 1849, the son of Frederick Page Walters, a Roman Catholic architect, to whom he was articled for three years before entering the Royal Academy Schools in 1871. He was attached to the architectural practice of Goldie & Child for about nine years, becoming chief assistant for the last six. He opened his independent practice in 1878, and had addresses in Great Queen Street and then Old Queen Street, London, where his son Edward John Walters joined him, eventually becoming a partner in 1924. He established a reputation as a prolific architect of Catholic churches, schools and institutions, and is seen as "a late follower of the tenets of Pugin and one of the leading Roman Catholic architects of his generation," who "was in particular demand, as an architect, in connection with church building in the southern counties" ("MR. F. A. Walters").
Walters's best-known work is in the south-west — Buckfast Abbey, Devon. But St Ann's, Lambeth, has also come in for a good deal of praise, as a church which shows his aim of developing "a refined and functional type of late Gothic"; Denis Evinson calls it "a church of truly noble simplicity" (184-85).
Walters died on 3 December 1931, at the age of 83. Another of Walters's sons had entered the ministry, and it was he who conducted his requiem mass and officiated at his burial, the latter at the Queen's Road Cemetery, Croydon. — Jacqueline Banerjee.
The chancel of St Peter the Apostle's, Woolwich.
Works
- Chancel and side-chapel of St Peter the Apostle's, Woolwich
- Later nineteenth-century work at St George's Cathedral, Southwark (e.g. the oak-leaf carved capitals)
- Guardian Angels Church, Mile End, London
References
"Basic Biographical Details: Frederick Arthur Walters." DSA (Dictionary of Scottish Architects). Web. 26 August 2016.
Evinson, Denis. Catholic Churches of London. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998.
"The Guardian Angels Roman Catholic Church 377, Stepney" (listed building text). Web. 26 August 2016.
"Mr. F. A. Walters, F.S.A." The Tablet (Obituary in the archives). 12 December 1931: 21.
"Roman Catholic Church of St Peter, Woolwich." British Listed Buildings. Web. 26 August 2016.
Created 26 August 2016