Following on from the last article, here is a bit more about Arthur Trystan Edwards.
Arthur Trystan Edwards was born in Merthyr on 10 November 1884 at the Old Court House. His father, Dr William Edwards, was a School inspector and later Chief Inspector of the Central Welsh School Board.
Following his education at Clifton school, and Hertford College, Oxford, where he took honours in Mathematical Moderations, in 1907 he became articled to the prominent architect Sir Reginald Bloomfield, R.A. (who designed, among other things, the Menin Gate in Ypres), who he reverentially referred to as ‘The Master’, and in 1911 he joined the department of civic design at Liverpool University.
In 1915, however, with the First World War raging, he joined the Royal Navy as a ‘hostilities only’ rating. He enjoyed his life in the navy so much that he spent the next twelve years of peace as a rating in the R.N.V.R. and he considered his naval experiences as one of the principal cultural influences of his life.
At the end of the War, Edwards joined the Ministry of Health, then responsible, among other things, for housing policy, and there he remained for six years.
In 1921 he published ‘The Things Which Are Seen: A Philosophy of Beauty and in 1924 he published ‘Good and Bad Manners in Architecture’ in which he urged architects to respect the neighbourhood in which they designed their buildings.
He was ahead of his time, too, in founding the Hundred New Towns Association, but even his energetic and rumbustious campaigning failed to make any significant impression until the Royal Commission on the Geographical Distribution of the Industrial Population, the Committee on Land Utilisation, the New Towns Committee and the Royal Commission on Population showed that at last official thought was moving towards his point of view. He gave evidence before all these bodies and their reports show how far his influence had begun to tell.
He prepared valuable plans for an auxiliary inner by-pass at Oxford above the top of Christchurch Meadow and designed schemes for the extension of the Palace of Westminster across Bridge Street, with its fine roof terrace and minimum demolition, all of which could have brought great benefit to the nation.
In 1925 the Chadwick Trustees awarded him £250 for research into the question of density of houses in large towns. His report, Modern Terrace Housing, was published in 1946 and was much criticised on the ground that his projected density was too high.
In 1953 he published his ‘A New Map of the World: The Trystan Edwards Projection’, an attempt to solve the problem of projecting the spherical surface of the earth on to a flat surface, a problem which by its very nature is incapable of satisfactory solution, followed in 1972 by ‘The Science of Cartography’.
After retiring to Wales and his home town he contributed to the regional studies published by Robert Hale with papers on Merthyr Tydfil, Rhondda and the Valleys; ‘Merthyr-Rhondda, the Prince and Wales of the Future’ appeared in 1972. He returned to architecture in 1968 and published ‘Tomorrow’s Architecture: The Triple Approach’. He continued to write well into old age and in 1970 he published Second Best-boy: The Autobiography of a Non-Speaker.
Among his other books are ‘Architectural Style’ (1925); ‘Sir William Chambers’ (1926), ‘The Second Battle of Hastings’ 1939-45 (1970) and ‘How to Observe Buildings’, (1972),
His small stature, mercurial temperament, genial presence and sharp wit were proverbial and part of his Welsh background. His fellow architects thought highly of him as a pioneer in town planning and as a man who inspired social developments in Britain which won world acclaim. He was FRIBA, FRTPI, FRGS.
He married in 1947 Margaret Meredyth, daughter of Canon F. C. Smith. She died in 1967 and he led a lonely life until his death aged 88 at St Tydfil’s Hospital on 29 January 1973.
