E. C. Robins

Edward Cookworthy Robins (1831 – 20 June 1918), known as E. C. Robins, was an English architect and author.

Early life and background

He was the son of the businessman and canal carriage investor John Robins and his wife Mary Ann Snell, daughter of Richard Snell. His sister Jane Elizabeth Robins married the educator Henry Cook, as his second wife, and was the mother of Theodore Andrea Cook. She is known, under her married name, as an artist who exhibited at the Royal Academy, as a book illustrator, and for silhouettes.[1][2][3][4][5] Edward Robins attended schools in Esher, Derby and London.[6]

Snell & Robins, carriers

For a period in the early 1820s, Snell, Robins & Snell were one of the competitors to Pickford & Co. as Manchester–London carriers.[7] John Robins, who married into the Snell family in 1814, was from a nonconformist background in Plymouth,[4] and was a partner in the family firm by 1820.

Richard Snell senior, Richard Snell junior and William Snell junior were wharfingers and carriers in partnership at Paddington Basin until 1817.[8] The canal carrier business of Richard Snell moved in 1819 to City Road Basin.[9] A partnership of those three and John Robins, at West Paddington, was dissolved in 1820, with William Snell withdrawing;[10] and Richard Snell senior then withdrew in 1821.[11] The London Post Office Directory for 1820 mentions Snell, Robins and Snell, canal carriers, based at the White Bear Inn on Basinghall and 6 & 7, The Wharf, Paddington.[12]

The canal carriers Snell & Robins took on Wharf 7 at the City Road Basin in 1823.[13] In 1824 John Robins and Richard Snell were carriers at 87 London Wall.[14] In 1825 they were managers of the London and Manchester Van Association.[15] John Robins withdrew from the partnership on the last day of that year.[16]

Career

Robins studied under the civil engineer and artist Emile de Buck, and the architect Sancton Wood, and set up on his own in 1851.[6][17] He won seven architectural design competitions in the period 1859 to 1874.[18] Elected an Associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1853, he became a Fellow in 1860.[19] In 1870 he was elected a member of the Society of Arts, then at 16 Southampton Street, and 1878 a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London.[6][20] He acted as Surveyor to the Dyer's Company.[21]

Robins came to concentrate on hospital design.[17]

Works

  • 1877, London Mission House, 23 Blomfield Street, London.[25] It acted as headquarters for a period for the London Missionary Society, and was known also as Livingstone House.[26] Replaced by Finsbury House at 22/23 Blomfield Street 1893–4 by Gordon, Lowther & Gunton.[27]
  • 1881, new building for the Evangelical Protestant Deaconesses' Institution and Training Hospital, Haringey. It was later known as Tottenham Hospital, and then Prince of Wales Hospital.[28][29][30]
  • Completed in 1883: designer of Finsbury Technical School, the first of a new crop of British training colleges.[31] ##
  • 1884, foundation stone laid in autumn 1883. Caterham School, architect.[32]

Books

  • Papers on Technical Education, Applied Science Buildings, Fittings and Sanitation (1885)[33]
  • Technical School and College Building (1887).[34] It included, for example, a chemistry bench design by Hermann Kolbe that became standard.[35]
  • The Temple of Solomon; & The Ethics of Art (1887), two lectures[36]

Family

Robins married in 1859 Elizabeth Southwell, sister of the three Southwell Brothers, photographers. Their only child, a daughter Ida Southwell Robins, a botanical artist, sculptor and illustrator, married in 1886 Henry Perrin.[37][38][1][39]

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to E. C. Robins.
  1. ^ a b "Perrin-Robins". Lady's Pictorial. 24 July 1886. p. 14.
  2. ^ "Jane Elizabeth Cook, British Museum". www.britishmuseum.org.
  3. ^ Buchanan, Ian. "Cook, Sir Theodore Andreau (1867–1928)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/55483. (Subscription, Wikipedia Library access or UK public library membership required.)
  4. ^ a b Cook, Theodore Andrea (1925). The Sunlit Hours; a record of sport and life. London, Nisbet & Co. Ltd. p. 13.
  5. ^ "The Witches Frolic". c. 1890.
  6. ^ a b c d Plarr, Victor (1895). Men and Women of the Time: A Dictionary of Contemporaries. G. Routledge and Sons, limited. p. 721.
  7. ^ Maw, Peter (28 February 2018). Transport and the industrial city: Manchester and the canal age, 1750–1850. Manchester University Press. pp. 127–128. ISBN 978-1-5261-3047-1.
  8. ^ "No. 17281". The London Gazette. 30 August 1817. p. 1863.
  9. ^ Faulkner, Alan H. (July 2004). "The City Road Basin" (PDF). Journal of the Railway and Canal Historical Society. 34 (189): 581.
  10. ^ "No. 17617". The London Gazette. 22 July 1820. p. 1435.
  11. ^ "No. 17736". The London Gazette. 11 August 1821. p. 1668.
  12. ^ The Post Office London Directory. Kelly's Directories Limited. 1820. p. 329.
  13. ^ Faulkner, Alan H. (July 2004). "The City Road Basin" (PDF). Journal of the Railway and Canal Historical Society. 34 (189): 582.
  14. ^ Barnett, David Colin (6 June 2012). "The structure of industry in London: 1775-1825". eprints.nottingham.ac.uk. University of Nottingham. p. 149.
  15. ^ Baines, Edward (1825). History, Directory, and Gazetteer, of the County Palatine of Lancaster. W. Wales & Co. p. 405.
  16. ^ "No. 18209". The London Gazette. 7 January 1826. p. 34.
  17. ^ a b "Edward Cookworthy Robins, Dictionary Scottish Architects, Part of Historic Environment Scotland". www.scottisharchitects.org.uk.
  18. ^ Harper, Roger H. (1983). Victorian Architectural Competitions: An Index to British and Irish Architectural Competitions in The Builder, 1843-1900. Mansell. p. 286. ISBN 978-0-7201-1685-4.
  19. ^ Sessional Papers Read at the Royal Institute of British Architects. The Institute. 1877. p. 14.
  20. ^ Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (1871). Journal. RSA. p. 30.
  21. ^ Brodie, Antonia (20 December 2001). Directory of British Architects, 1834-1914: Vol. 2 (L-Z). A&C Black. p. 487. ISBN 978-0-8264-5514-7.
  22. ^ Simmonds, Henry S. (1882). All about Battersea. Battersea: Ashfield. p. 102.
  23. ^ "Genuki: St John, Battersea, Church of England, Surrey". www.genuki.org.uk.
  24. ^ "St Paul, St John's Hill, Battersea (former) now Abacus Ark Nursey School". London Churches in photographs. 6 January 2017.
  25. ^ Weinreb, Ben; Hibbert, Christopher, eds. (1983). The London Encyclopaedia. Macmillan. p. 74. ISBN 978-0-333-30024-4.
  26. ^ Parsons, Neil (3 February 1998). King Khama, Emperor Joe, and the Great White Queen: Victorian Britain Through African Eyes. University of Chicago Press. p. 77. ISBN 978-0-226-64745-6.
  27. ^ Historic England. "Details from listed building database (1064718)". National Heritage List for England.
  28. ^ "Exterior view from the north-west looking across The Green towards the Deaconesses' Hospital (BL06943) Archive Item - The Bedford Lemere Collection, Historic England". historicengland.org.uk.
  29. ^ "Lost Hospitals of London". ezitis.myzen.co.uk.
  30. ^ "Evangelical Protestant Deaconesses' Institution and Training Hospital". London Remembers.
  31. ^ Jardine, Boris; Nall, Josh (14 July 2022). Victorian Material Culture. Vol. 2. Taylor & Francis. p. 228. ISBN 978-1-315-40033-4.
  32. ^ "Caterham". Building News. 26 October 1883. p. 43.
  33. ^ Robins, Edward Cookworthy (1885). Papers on Technical Education, Applied Science Buildings, Fittings and Sanitation. J. Davy.
  34. ^ Robins, Edward Cookworthy (1887). Technical school and college building. Whittaker And Co, London.
  35. ^ Brock, William Hodson (2011). The Case of the Poisonous Socks: Tales from Chemistry. Royal Society of Chemistry. p. 93. ISBN 978-1-84973-324-3.
  36. ^ Robins, Edward Cookworthy (1887). The temple of Solomon: a review of the various theories respecting its form and style of architecture: The ethics of art: two lectures. Whittaker & Co.
  37. ^ "Index entry". FreeBMD. ONS. Retrieved 23 December 2025.
  38. ^ "Index entry". FreeBMD. ONS. Retrieved 23 December 2025.
  39. ^ "Ida Perrin".
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