Mary Medd

Mary Beaumont Medd (née Crowley, 4 August 1907 - 6 June 2005) was a British architect, known for public buildings including schools.[1] Medd was the first architect to be employed by Hertfordshire county council.[2] Together with her husband David Leslie Medd (1917–2009), she joined a team of architects commissioned to build schools in Hertfordshire after World War II. Together, the Medds became leading school designers in England and Wales.[3]

Mary Beaumont Medd
Born	Mary Beaumont Crowley 4 August 1907
Died	6 June 2005 (aged 97)
Nationality	British
Alma mater	Bedales School
Occupation	Architect
Practice	Hertfordshire county Ministry of Education

She was the daughter of Ralph Henry Crowley (1869–1953), who worked as Chief Medical Officer in the Ministry of Education.[4] After education at home, she spent one year at an experimental school run by Isabel Fry, and then was at Bedales School from 1921 to 1926.[5]

As Mary Crowley, working with Cecil George Kemp, she designed three houses at 102, 104 and 106 Orchard Road, Tewin, Hertfordshire, in 1935–36.[6]

National Life Stories conducted an oral history interview (C467/29) with Mary Medd in 1998 for its Architects Lives' collection held by the British Library.[7]

References

1. Walker, Lynne; Saint, Andrew (24 June 2005). "Mary Medd, Obituary". Theguardian.com. Retrieved 6 October 2015.
2. Walker, Lynne; Saint, Andrew (2005-06-23). "Obituary: Mary Medd". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2020-03-08.
3. Harwood, Elain (27 April 2009). "David Medd: Architect who revolutionised school design". The Independent. Retrieved 8 October 2015.
4. Catherine Burke,About looking: vision, transformation, and the education of the eye in discourses of school renewal past and present, British Educational Research Journal Vol. 36, No. 1 (February 2010), pp. 65–82, at p. 66. Published by: Wiley on behalf of BERA JSTOR 27823587
5. Catherine Burke,About looking: vision, transformation, and the education of the eye in discourses of school renewal past and present, British Educational Research Journal Vol. 36, No. 1 (February 2010), pp. 65–82, at p. 80 note 10 and p. 68. Published by: Wiley on behalf of BERA JSTOR 27823587
6. Gould, Jeremy (1977). Modern houses in Britain, 1919-1939. Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain. p. 45.
7. National Life Stories, 'Medd, Mary (1 of 11) National Life Stories Collection: Architects' Lives', The British Library Board, 1998. Retrieved 10 April 2018

Further reading

• Burke, Catherine (2013). A Life in Education and Architecture: Mary Beaumont Medd. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. ISBN 978-1-4094-7190-5.
• Gould, Jeremy (1977), Modern houses in Britain, 1919-1939, Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain