W. Braxton Sinclair
Captain William Charles Braxton Sinclair FRIBA (1883 – 29 November 1962) was a British architect who worked in the United Kingdom and in Burma, where he was a captain in the Royal Engineers. He was also a local historian. Army service. Sinclair was born in Highbury, Middlesex, England, to Charles John Sinclair, an accountant. He joined The Essex Regiment and was promoted to second lieutenant in 1907 in the 3rd Battalion and lieutenant in the 6th Battalion in 1910. As lieutenant, he served with the regiment in the First World War. In the Second World War he served  with the Royal Engineers, initially as a lieutenant and later as a captain. Three photographs associated with his war service are held at the National Army Museum. Works. His works include: In 1913, Sinclair restored the tower at Holy Cross Church in Greenford, north-west London. In 1950, he extended the neo-Georgian flats that had been built in 1937 in Chesterfield Gardens in Greenwich. His design of a sophisticated air raid shelter for flats at Queen's Gate, in South Kensington, London, was published in "The Builder" in October 1938. While briefly stationed in York during the Second World  War, Sinclair, who was a Georgian Group member, wrote notes which, revised by the Society's architects, became the first publication of the York Georgian Society, "Some Hints on the Maintenance and Repair of 17th and 18th Century Premises" (1945). Legacy. Sinclair bequeathed, to the Victoria and Albert Museum, four Burmese pictorial textile hangings known as kalagas. The museum also holds three watercolours by Sinclair, two showing Burmese landscapes and one of a Burmese pagoda. After his death Mrs Mary Simpson donated on his behalf, to the Victoria and Albert Museum, an 18th- or 19th-century wooden and lacquered sculpted  figure of the Buddha Shakyamuni.