Sir Geoffrey Alan Jellicoe (8 October 1900 – 17 July 1996) was an English architect, town planner, landscape architect, garden designer, landscape and garden historian, lecturer and author. His strongest interest was in landscape and garden design.
As a designer, he often included "his distinctive signature characteristics, such as canals, weirs, bridges, viewing platforms and associated planting by Jellicoe's wife, Susan," as at the Hemel Hempstead water gardens he designed for this new town in the late 1950s. The garden canal he designed in the 1970s for the Royal Horticultural Society's gardens at RHS Wisley to display waterlilies was later renamed the "Jellicoe Canal" as a memorial.RHS: "Jellicoe Canal"
Early life and education
Jellicoe was born in Chelsea, London on 8 October 1900. The younger son of Florence Waterson () and her husband George Edward Jellicoe, a publisher's manager, and later publisher. He trained as an architect at the Architectural Association in London in 1919 and won a British Prix de Rome for Architecture in 1923, which enabled him to research his first book Italian Gardens of the Renaissance with John C. Shepherd. This pioneering study did much to re-awaken interest in this great period of landscape design, and through its copious photographic illustrations publicized the then perilously decayed condition of many of the gardens. He later became principal of the Architectural Association from 1938 to 1942.
Career In 1929 he was a founding member of the Landscape Institute and from 1939 to 1949 he was its president. In 1948, he became the founding President of the International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA). From 1954 to 1968 he was a member of Royal Fine Art Commission, and from 1967 to 1974 a Trustee of Tate Gallery.
Jellicoe taught at the University of Greenwich from 1979 to 1989. He came as a lecturer and visiting critic, usually on six occasions a year.
Personal life On 11 July 1936, he married Susan Pares (1907–1986), the daughter of Margaret Ellis (Daisy), (1879–1964) and Sir Bernard Pares (1867–1949), the historian and academic known for his work on Russia.
Death and legacy He died in Devon, of heart failure, on the 17 July 1996. He was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium.
National Life Stories conducted an oral history interview (C467/6) with Geoffrey Jellicoe in 1996 for its Architects Lives' collection, held by the British Library.National Life Stories, 'Jellicoe, Geoffrey (1 of 5) National Life Stories Collection: Architects' Lives', The British Library Board, 1996. Retrieved 10 April 2018
Recognition Jellicoe was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1961 New Year Honours,United Kingdom: and knighted in the 1979 Birthday Honours for services to landscape architecture.
He was elected as a Royal Academician (RA) on 29 May 1991, and awarded the Victoria Medal of Honour (VMH), the Royal Horticultural Society's highest award, in 1994.
Design projects
Note: All locations below are in England unless stated otherwise. 1934–36 Caveman Restaurant, Cheddar Gorge, Somerset 1934–39 Ditchley Park, Oxfordshire 1935 Plan for Calverton Colliery, Calverton, Nottinghamshire 1936 The Great Mablethorpe Plan, Lincolnshire 1942 Houses for munitions workers at Whitchurch, Cardiff, Wales 1945 "Corbusian" plan for Wolverton (since 1967, part of Milton Keynes) 1947 Plan for Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire 1951–52 East Housing Site, Lansbury Estate, Poplar 1952 Church Hill Memorial Garden, Walsall, West Midlands 1956 Harvey's Store roof garden, Guildford, Surrey 1957–59 Water Gardens, Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire 1959 Cliveden Rose Garden, Taplow, Buckinghamshire 1955–68 Glass Age Development Committee, sponsored by Pilkington Glass with Edward D. Mills and Ove Arup & Partners. Projects included Motopia, the Crystal Span Bridge, plans for Soho, Sea City and others. 1964–65 Kennedy Memorial Garden, Runnymede, Surrey 1970–90 Shute House, Donhead St Mary, Wiltshire – extensive gardens, his last work, his favourite, and considered to be his finest 1972–90 St Paul's Walden Bury, Hertfordshire – garden restoration and additions 1979–89 Hartwell House Garden, Buckinghamshire 1980–86 Sutton Place Garden, Surrey 1984 Moody Gardens, Galveston, Texas, USA
Books and other publications Italian Gardens of the Renaissance (with J.C. Shepherd) (1926) Baroque Gardens of Austria (1932) The Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, etc. (1933) Garden Decoration & Ornament for Smaller Houses (1936) Gardens of Europe (1937) Report accompanying an Outline Plan for Guildford prepared for the Municipal Borough Council (1945) Studies in Landscape Design (1960) Motopia: A Study in the Evolution of Urban Landscape (1961) A Landscape Plan for Sark (1967) The Landscape of Man (1975) Blue Circle Cement Hope Works Derbyshire (1980?) The Guelph Lectures on Landscape Design (1983) The Oxford Companion to Gardens (1986) The Landscape of Civilisation (1989) The Studies of a Landscape Designer over 80 years (c.1993) Gardens & Design, Gardens of Europe (1995)
References
Further reading Spens, Michael. The complete landscape designs and gardens of Geoffrey Jellicoe c.1994 Spens, Michael. Gardens of the mind c.1992
External links
Portrait by Derry Moore, 1992 At the National portrait Gallery – accessed November 2021 Portrait by Tara Heinemann, 1984 At the National portrait Gallery – accessed November 2021 Portrait by Anne-Katrin Purkiss, 1990 At the National portrait Gallery – accessed November 2021