User:Storye book/Ernest Trevor Spashett

Ernest Trevor Spashett ARIBA (Penzance 23 June 1923 – Herne Bay 21 March 1994), always known professionally as E.T. Spashett, was an English architect of the late 20th century, particularly associated with the design of public and religious buildings.

Early career
Spashett was born in Penzance and served in the Royal Air Force 1942–1947, flying Halifaxes.

As project architect for major practices
He worked for Cambridge, Gillingham and Birmingham Councils designing council housing, schools and hospitals, and qualified in 1954. He worked with Yates, Cook and Derbyshire in London from around 1954 to around 1960, then from around 1960 with Austin Vernon & Partners (who had refurbished Dulwich Picture Gallery) in Dulwich from 1959. Here among other projects he designed the Church Army's Wilson Carlile Training College in Blackheath, opened in 1965. After spending two years focused on the design of the college and its Church Army Chapel – besides designing other projects and mentoring a young German architect Manfred Bresgens at Austin Vernon – he attended the opening ceremony beside the chapel but was excluded by the firm from the consecration service inside the building and subsequently left the practice in 1965.

Independent work
He specialised in church design and restoration, so in the 1960s and 1970s he was consultant architect for the Benedictines, taking instructions from Basil Hume. In the 1970s he designed accommodation at two Franciscan monasteries, including a large, reflective, gold, cross-shaped window (now lost) at Gorton Monastery, Manchester, which at certain seasons caused a gold cross-shaped reflection on the public roadway. From 1965 he was architect for estate agents Geering and Colyer at 24 High Street in Tunbridge Wells, then left to work freelance at Cheltenham House, 62 Mount Pleasant, Tunbridge Wells 1982–1989. He continued freelance work in Herne Bay, Kent until retirement due to ill health in 1992. He died on 21 March 1994 and was cremated at Thanet Crematorium at Margate.