Holford, William Graham, Lord

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Holford, William Graham, Lord (1907–75). South-African born, he trained under Charles Reilly at Liverpool. During the 1939–45 war he helped to create the framework of British town-planning legislation, and was involved with Abercrombie in creating the County and Greater London Plans. He proposed development plans for the Universities of Liverpool (1949–54), Exeter (1955–75—which damaged Harris's far more sensitive scheme), and Kent (1958), and, with Holden, the Plan for the City of London (1946–7). His less than satisfactory designs for the precinct of St Paul's Cathedral, London (1956), did not stand the test of time, and the area was redeveloped from the end of C20. Nevertheless, his influence as an architect and planner was widespread, especially in the UK during the first three decades after 1945, but his reputation, while dazzling his contemporaries, failed to outlive him for long.

Bibliography

G. Cherry (1986);
Kalman (1994);
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004);
Jane Turner (1996)

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