Harold Bruce Allsop, BArch, FRIBA, AMTPI

Bruce Allsopp was born into a Quaker family in Oxford on 4 July 1912 and went to Manchester Grammar School before taking a first-class degree in 1933 at Liverpool School of Architecture, where he was taught by Sir Charles Reilly. A Rome finalist in 1934, he worked briefly as an assistant architect in Chichester and then began his teaching career at Leeds College of Art in 1935. Allsopp left Leeds in 1940 to join the Royal Engineers, into which he was commissioned; he saw action in North Africa and Italy and witnessed the destruction of some great Italian monuments, notably Monte Cassino – a sight he never forgot. He returned to teaching in 1946 as lecturer in architecture at the University of Durham, progressing to senior lecturer in 1955 and moving to Newcastle-upon-Tyne when the university college was incorporated as a separate university in 1963. As its Director of Architectural Studies from 1965-9, Allsopp was instrumental in establishing the first three-year university BA course in architecture followed by two years of postgraduate study, which is now standard practice in schools of architecture. He remained at Newcastle until retirement as reader in the history of architecture in 1977, and spent the rest of his life in Northumberland. Allsopp was indefatiguable in promoting his chosen subject. He was a founder member of the Society of Architectural Historians, serving as chairman from 1959-65, and president of the Federation of Northern Art Societies, with its strong architectural element, from 1980-3. He founded the Oriel Press in Stocksfield in 1962 to specialize in the publication of art and architectural works, starting with a series of well-illustrated pocket guides covering the cathedrals, churches and abbeys of many European cities, the much enjoyed research for which took place with colleagues in university vacations. The Press was absorbed by Routledge & Kegan Paul in 1974, with Allsopp as a director until 1985. Allsopp’s list of his own publications includes some forty books, ranging from pot-boilers such as Photography for Tourists (1966) and Inigo Jones and the Lords a’Leaping (1975) to the weightier Modern Architecture of Northern England (1970) and Historic Architecture of Northumberland and Newcastle upon Tyne (1977). Nothing if not versatile, Allsopp also wrote two well-reviewed historical novels, presented television films in the 1970s, was an accomplished watercolourist and pianist, designed an organ case for St Thomas’s Church, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and was Master of the Art Workers Guild in 1970. He converted the premises of the Oriel Press in Stocksfield into a meeting house for the local Society of Friends, naturally preparing the plans and designing the furnishings himself. Paintings by both Allsopp and his talented wife decorate the walls. He died on 22 February 2000.