Charles Simmons

• Born  1909
• Died March 1962

MR C H SIMMONS: AN APPRECIATION.  A Colleague writes: Charles Howard Simmons, county architect of Lancashire, who died on March 17 at the age of 53, was one of the small group of official architects who have helped to bring about the great post-war improvement in the quality of architecture produced by public offices in this country. He served throughout the war with the Royal Engineers and afterwards worked in Essex before coming to Lancashire in 1946 as assistant and later deputy county architect. He was appointed count architect of Shropshire in 1951 and returned to Lancashire as county architect on the retirement of Mr G Noel Hill in 1958. The quality of his work in Shropshire is very high. His buildings are essentially simple but beautifully detailed and make excellent use of local materials. In Lancashire the same direct and sensitive approach was being applied to a vast programme of county building which made extensive use of prefabrication. Charles Simmons was a sensitive designer, but he was also a great administrator who worked hard and expected equal enthusiasm and application from those he worked with. He had a clear vision of the architect as the leader of the building team and as an integral part of the building industry, but he saw architecture in a still wider sense as a major art related to other arts and as a contribution towards a better society. In Shropshire he was the founder of the Column Group of architects and members of other professions who met in the Georgian mansion of Attingham to listen to distinguished speakers and to learn to work together and understand each other’s point of view.

He was a Southerner with a real feeling for the character and qualities of the North and had already made a great contribution to the county which he had adopted as his home. His death is a great personal loss to his friends, but it is particularly sad that he should die as some of his major works come to fruition and when he had such great opportunities ahead. [Manchester Guardian 26 March 1962 page 17]