Dykes Bower, Stephen Ernest

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Dykes Bower, Stephen Ernest (1903–94). English architect. He continued the traditions of the Gothic Revival, and was in the front rank of church architects and decorators. He rebuilt All Saints, Hockerill, near Bishops Stortford, Herts. (1936), in Modern Gothic, and designed St John's Church, Newbury, Berks. (1955–7), a robust essay in the Rundbogenstil, probably his best work. Other designs include the vigorous Baroque high-altar and ciborium at St Paul's Cathedral, London (1949–58). He restored St Vedast's, Foster Lane, London (1953–60), Westminster Abbey (from 1951—where he was Surveyor of the Fabric for 22 years), and Bodley's polychrome interior of St John's, Tue Brook, Liverpool (from 1967—a particularly felicitous achievement). He designed distinguished extensions for the Cathedral at Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, from 1956, work on which continued into C21, under The Gothic Design Practice, headed by Dykes Bower's former assistant, Warwick Pethers (1959– ). In 1979 R. C. Carpenter's Lancing College Chapel, Sussex, was completed to Dykes Bower's designs: it has the largest rose-window to be built in England since those medieval examples in the transepts of Westminster Abbey.

Bibliography

Dykes Bower et al. (1985);
SJ: Independent (14 Nov. 1994), 14; personal knowledge