After these comparatively short experiences of , however , some of the best offices of the day , he spent four years in Bond Street assisting Mr. William Flockhart .sx Flockhart was a great draughtsman too , with the pictorial view of architecture which was then prevalent .sx He had a big practice in spite of the somewhat irritable temperament which shows in his work .sx Among his jobs was a great country house in the north of Scotland , costing over a quarter of a million pounds even in those pre-war days .sx That was , I suppose , the pre-war scale of country house building for some people .sx This house was for a rich shipowner whose father had been a fisherman in the neighbourhood .sx The son came back to his native heath in bleak Sutherlandshire to demonstrate his father's success in producing such a son by building a great baronial pile , with suites of rooms in every known style .sx Adshead was the draughtsman in charge , and it was part of his work to meet and attend to all the great decorators or dealers , like the elder Duveen , who in turn came down with their wares .sx For him it was a great schooling , Flockhart and his London decorators being men of taste , though it is a little difficult for us to-day to under-stand their museum point of view .sx Anyhow , the three years' experience in building this absurd castle , and filling it with all the finest things the markets could produce , gave Adshead both confidence in himself and breadth of view .sx He was now ready to tackle London on his own account , and like many young men of to-day his path of success was the double one of competitions on the one hand , and perspectives for the Royal Academy on the other .sx It was over the perspectives that I first knew him .sx I was then working in John Belcher's office , with J. J. Joass at the head of it .sx I remember one night , Joass , himself an old Owen Jones prizeman , and one of the best colourists among the younger men , invited me to his rooms , and told me that my friend Rickards , who was to be there , was bringing round an even better draughtsman than himself .sx I was all agog .sx In my enthusiasm for Rickards , I could not believe such a one existed .sx However , little Rickards arrived with a tall , gaunt young man , well over six feet , who said very little , but when he did reduced even Rickards's volubility to silence .sx He who never listened to anyone , always listened to Adshead .sx His was the deciding word , the penetrating judgment .sx At the next Royal Academy exhibition , I remember looking out for Adshead's drawings .sx The perspective draughtsman in those days was not encouraged to put his name on his wares as plainly as he is to-day .sx At first I had some difficulty in finding one with the initials S.D.A. tucked away in a corner .sx When I had found one or two , however , the truth flashed upon me .sx He had some twenty drawings in one exhibition .sx In short , he was the Farey of those days .sx Here is a story which demonstrates it .sx The competition for the new Law Courts in the Old Bailey , .sx which was to replace the beautiful Newgate Prison with the present disastrous building , was afoot .sx It was limited to six supposedly leading men , yet that did not ensure success .sx That , however , is another story .sx Mine is this .sx We were very pleased , I remember , in Belcher's office , that Adshead was making our perspectives .sx We felt sure the design would be well shown .sx It was , but so were the designs of four others .sx When the exhibition was opened , we found five out of six were by Adshead .sx All these competitors had employed him .sx It put them on a level in that respect at any rate .sx Such then was his standing as a perspective man in those days .sx In 1909 Adshead moved to Liverpool .sx John Burns had just promoted his first Town Planning Act .sx In Liverpool , it had been noticed that in the debates in the House , no mention was made of architecture in its broader aspects , or even of what are now called the amenities .sx Hygiene , engineering , even law , had their place , but not aesthetics .sx At that moment of history , England was probably too absorbed in amassing wealth for the notion of the town as the ultimate work of art to have entered the minds of our legislators .sx Perhaps is has not yet .sx However , it occurred to someone in the Liverpool School of Architecture to draw the late Lord Leverhulme's attention to this anomaly .sx It was suggested to him that the way to focus in the public eye the fact that town-planning was , in its broadest sense , merely advanced architecture , was for him to found a chair in the subject in the Liverpool School of Architecture .sx One letter was sufficient .sx He had had his own experience at Port Sunlight and elsewhere , and grasped the need at once .sx Not only was the money forthcoming for the professorship , but more still in order that the new professor might have an organ by means of which he could put his ideas before the world .sx Hence The Town Planning Review , the quarterly journal of the department , which has maintained its position ever since .sx This , however , is anticipating things a little .sx The professor in the new subject had first to be found .sx He might have been looked for among the sociologists , the surveyors of property , or even the purveyors of uplift , whom the new subject was beginning to attach to itself .sx Indeed , the University was pressed to do so .sx The Liverpool School , however , was determined that its first professor of Civic Design should be an architect with , too , a broad , rather monumental outlook on his art .sx The school was not out then to save the country-side , but rather to restore the towns .sx Careful inquiries were made advertisements would have been of no use in such a case - and finally Adshead was selected , and made the first professor of town planning in England , with Patrick Abercrombie , now his successor , transferred from the School of Architecture proper , to be his assistant .sx It was a successful choice from the start .sx A rapid survey of what .sx was happening in other countries was made , Adshead travelling over Europe , and the Professor of Architecture over America .sx A library was formed , including all the schemes which had up till then been mooted .sx America , wearying of her gridiron towns , was the active sphere in those days .sx With these experiments , and the great plans of Paris and Washington as a basis , a definite body of theory was got together , which gradually appeared over Professor Adshead's name in the now established Town Planning Review .sx Those early numbers will be interesting one day , historically .sx I should like to see republished , in book form , his articles on " The Furnishing of the Town .sx " I should like to see a collection of his schemes for improving definite centres in London and Liverpool published too .sx There were his schemes for the areas in front and behind the British Museum , for the area round the Marble Arch , and many more .sx It was in making these schemes plain to the plain man that Adshead's fine perspective draughtsmanship was so valuable .sx Everyone was interested in them , as they were the other day when the Observer came out with a full page of his fine drawing of his Charing Cross Scheme .sx Liverpool was particularly intrigued by his illustrated lectures showing the mistakes of its fathers and grandfathers , and the possibilities still ahead .sx So facile and quick was Adshead with these drawings , always embodying some sound idea , that the town still thinks , now that he has left us these many years , that we can produce at a moment's notice a design for , say , the entrance to the Mersey Tunnel and all the buildings round it , or for any other great improvement .sx Alas , for such drawings we have no longer either Adshead or Charlton Bradshaw , the old Liverpool student who owes most , I think , to Adshead in this respect .sx Indeed , Adshead , at Liverpool , soon gathered round him not only a fine band of town-planning students , but had his great influence throughout the school proper on staff and students alike .sx Liverpool , in those days , based its teaching on the great classical tradition , as indeed it still does , if with less attention to stylistic detail .sx It was because Adshead was always a great exponent of that tradition , and just a little ahead of most people in its interpretation , that he fitted so well into the Liverpool atmosphere , and proved so invigorating and stimulating a colleague .sx His work has always shown this .sx When most people were experimenting with Wren , he was developing a full eighteenth-century manner , and when they had caught him up , he was among the first to discover the charm of the Regency .sx Before he came to Liver-pool , he had won various competitions , such as that for the Public Library and Technical School at Ramsgate , and one for a library at Hawick .sx In 1908 he had executed a warehouse in Tooley Street in a fine broad manner , which makes this building to-day seem almost modernist in expression .sx Soon after his arrival in Liverpool , he was .sx appointed architect to the Liverpool Repertory Theatre Company , of which a colleague was Chairman , and converted for it the interior of an old theatre , looking like part of a Turkish Seraglio , into the well-known graceful auditorium , with its Regency detail , which is the envy of every actor-manager who sees it .sx As the first professor of town-planning in the country , however , Adshead was soon to have his chance of developing an urban area on a considerable scale .sx In Liverpool it was naturally hoped he would receive the Delhi appointment alongside Brodie , the City Engineer :sx that , however , was not to he .sx About this time a great number of the leases on the Prince of Wales's Duchy of Cornwall Estate at Kennington were falling in , and there were many complaints about the housing conditions .sx The Council of the Duchy , with the present King , who was then Prince of Wales , at its head , determined to make the estate a model example .sx Sir Walter Peacock , the secretary to the Duchy , recommended that Professor Adshead be called in to advise them .sx His advice was accepted , and he was asked to prepare detailed schemes for rebuilding .sx It was at this moment , I think , that he asked Stanley Ramsey to help him as his partner .sx The work meant a London office as well as a Liverpool one , and a partner was very necessary .sx It always seems to me that in Ramsey , Professor Adshead found the ideal partner , as Ramsey did in him .sx Here was a young man I had the pleasure of being Ramsey's first teacher who had made a special study of late Georgian and Regency buildings .sx His two volumes on the Smaller Georgian Houses are well known and standard works , with , I believe , a great sale in America as well as here .sx Once the main lines of the big improvement scheme were settled there was a mass of detail in small houses , shops , and blocks of flats , all to be carried out simply but finely .sx We all know how the Kennington work , which is the joint effort of both of them , has ever since it first appeared been considered a model for London working-class building .sx The architects had caught the London character at its best .sx Their flat-faced buildings in stock bricks , with high parapets hiding the roofs , but made delicate and refined with such interesting detail as intersecting curved bars to windows and charming little door heads , raised just before the war the whole standard of working-class housing , so that when after that catastrophe the nation set about to redeem its pledges a certain respect for proportions and elegance of detail was demanded .sx I trace , as is indeed obvious , a great deal of the new standard of small-house design in the better post-war housing schemes to the work of Adshead and Ramsey at Kennington , Dormanstown , and elsewhere , for when the war ended they were very soon immersed in such work up and down the country .sx