Henry Thomas Sandy

• Born                    1868 at Stafford (1901 census)
• Died                    16 January 1922

Henry Thomas Sandy was born in 1868, the eldest of the eight sons of Henry Sandy, estate agent and seedsman, of Stafford. He was educated at St. Wilfrid's College, Cotton Hall, near Cheadle, Staffordshire. Here he was followed by five of his brothers, two of whom, Frederick and Hubert, went on to train for the priesthood at St Mary’s College, Oscott.  Henry Thomas Sandy trained as an architect, serving his articles with Nicholas Joyce of Stafford, and  remaining with him until 1889. For wider experience and responsibility, he went to the London office of  Basil C Champneys, architect to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, where he remained for 18 months and then for six months was assistant to Elijah Jones. In 1891 he returned to Stafford to commence independent practice and about 1900 he acquired the practice of Nicholas Joyce in Stafford. By 1914 he had established a second office in Birmingham.

Some of his best known works included St Edward's Church and St Paul's Convent Chapel, Selly Park; St. Edward's Home and St. Gerard's Hospital, Coleshill; St. Paul's Schools, Vernon Road, Edgbaston; St. Chad's Girls' School, Brearley Street; and the Home for Mentally Deficient Children at Besford Court.  For many years he also acted as architect to St Mary=s College, Oscott, Sutton Coldfield, the Roman Catholic seminary previously attended by two of his brothers.

In 1918, he acquired  the offices and whatever remained of the architectural practice of Henry Oswald Hill, of Manchester, who had been killed in action, shot down over enemy trenches in October 1917.  Initially Sandy was in partnership with Herbert Cecil Powell under the style £Hill Sandy and Powell," but this was dissolved on 14 October 1919.  Sandy made a second attempt to form a partnership with J H or WC Mangan of Preston which was also unsuccessful, although the practice was listed as “Hill Sandy and Mangan”  in the 1920 edition of the Manchester Street Directory. In 1920 Sandy finally took into partnership Ernest Bower Norris, ARIBA, but this partnership too proved short-lived, cut short by Henry Sandy’s unexpected death in January 1922 at the age of 53.

By the death of H T Sandy and within two years of entering the partnership  Ernest Bower Norris  found himself sole principal of two practices.  He continued to run the Stafford office under the style of "Sandy and Norris," until his death in 1969. Similarly in Manchester, the office at 9 Albert Square was run under the style of "Hill, Sandy and Norris," although here Norris later took F M Reynolds into partnership, a partnership dissolved in 1946.

Obituary              Builder 27 January 1922 Page 169
Obituary              The Oscotian. Volume 22 part 1 1922/ page 55-56 - obituary