Dan Gibson

• Born: 20 September 1865
• Died: 19 June 1907 aged 41

The Arts and Crafts architect Dan Gibson was born on 20 September 1865 at Bassingthorpe, Lincolnshire, where his parents farmed 312 acres of land. He was educated at the Grammar School at Oakham before receiving his architectural education with Smith & Broderick of Hull. About 1888 he became an assistant to Richard Knill Freeman of Bolton and was sent as resident architect to supervise extensive building works at Graythwaite Hall near Windermere, the home Colonel Sandys where he remained until 1891. Here he first met the landscape architect Thomas Hayton Mawson with whom he was later in partnership.

In 1892 Gibson entered the London offices of Ernest George and Peto as an assistant. Described as the "Eton of architectural practices." it attracted some of the most talented young architects of their generation, including Edwin Lutyens, Guy Dawber, and Herbert Baker. However, in 1893 serious illness forced Gibson to leave Sir Ernest George after less than two years. He returned to the Lake District to recover.Here he later set up in independent practice with W H Ward as his assistant. They had met in the office of Ernest George and Peto where Ward had been an improver. Ward only remained briefly with Gibson, subsequently moving to the office of Edwin Lutyens before setting up practice on his own account.

It was during this period that Gibson developed his distinctive arts and crafts style.  No doubt inspired by the writings of Wordsworth and Ruskin and by his time with Ernest George, Gibson took the local vernacular building tradition merely as a starting point for his designs. His houses were generally long and low and would commonly feature simple massing, roughcast walls, sloping buttresses, arched porches, casement windows and trademark round chimneys. These last, beloved by Wordsworth, became symbolic but were a far from typical feature of Lakeland farms.

In 1897 (according to the directories) or 1898 (according to Mawson) Gibson entered into partnership with Thomas Mawson under the style Mawson & Gibson, architects, Crescent Road, Windermere. In the years 1898‑1900 they collaborated on extensive garden works and continued to work together even after the partnership was dissolved in 1899 or 1900. From about 1899 to 1902 Thomas Mawson’s son, John William Mawson, was an articled pupil. The practice still operated from Crescent Road, Windermere.  Thomas Mawson later wrote of the partnership: