page_title: Thomas Ford (architect)
section_title: Architectural career
hierarchical_section_title: Thomas Ford (architect) / Architectural career
caption_attribution_description: St Mary the Virgin Church, Storrington, West Sussex, seen from the south.
context_page_description: Thomas Francis Ford FRIBA was a prolific ecclesiastical architect, Diocesan Architect for Southwark, an Ashpitel Prize winner at the Royal Institute of British Architects, founder of Thomas Ford Architects and with his brother Ralph, who owned the largest and most complete collection of English Bibles in England, a translator in 1948 of the New Testament.
context_section_description: Ford's architectural career began in the office of W A Forsyth where he was briefly a partner before starting his own architectural practice in 1926, initially concentrating on commercial work.  By 1929 the practice was called Ford and Harkess and based at 12 City Road in the City of London.  Ford lived at Eltham from 1930 and worked extensively in south east London where he started to specialise in churches and became Diocesan Architect for Southwark.
  Ford was ‘not known for his love of advanced modern architecture and his churches derive from a number of styles, though many show primarily the influence of Sir John Soane (1753-1837) and other architects of the Regency’.   After World War II, during which he was Head Air Raid Warden, he was engaged in the rebuilding of damaged churches as well as designing new ones.  Most of his ‘post-war buildings are modest’, reflecting post-war privation, although he regularly engaged Hans Feibusch ‘to paint murals’.
caption: St Mary's Church, Storrington, where Ford added a vestry south of the chancel, 1933
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