George Grenfell-Baines

Who was George Grenfell-Baines?

Professor Sir George Grenfell-Baines OBE DL was an English architect and town planner. Born in Preston, as George Baines, his family’s humble circumstances forced him to start work at the age of fourteen. Both George and his younger brother, Richard, were prodigiously gifted mathematicians and draughtsmen. George left a secure, but limiting, job in the Lancashire County Architect’s Office to work for the prestigious private firm of Bradshaw Gass & Hope in Bolton in 1930.

During the 1930s, George became aware of Modernism, particularly the work of Le Corbusier and Gropius, through the architectural press and was determined to practice it himself. He studied at Manchester University for two years from 1934. It was at this time he adopted the name George Grenfell Baines at the suggestion of fellow student Gerald Hayforthwaite. Later this was hyphenated as Grenfell-Baines: Grenfell being his mother’s maiden name. He was known to friends and colleagues as “GG”.

In 1935, he was awarded the Heywood prize for the design of reinforced concrete flats.