During the Second World War from 1940 45 Erith became a farmer in Essex, where he lived for the rest of his life. This led him to John Soane, an important influence on his early designs but later he turned to earlier sources of inspiration and especially to Palladio and the robust practicality of his farmhouse villas.

As a young man he looked back to the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to pick up the thread of tradition while it was still unbroken and carry it forward from there. Among Erith's early commissions were Great House, Dedham (1937) and gates, lodges and cottages in Windsor Great Park for King George VI (1939). In 1934 he married Pamela, younger daughter of Arthur and Elsie Spencer Jackson, who had also qualified at the AA. From 1929 39 he was in partnership with Bertram Hume, with whom he won an international competition for replanning the Lower Norrmalm area of Stockholm (1934). He was commissioned by his aunt to remodel her house, Meadowside, at Loughton and to build an additional house to its rear. He trained at the Architectural Association (1921 26) and worked for Morley Horder and Verner Rees before setting up his own practice in London in 1928. At the age of four he contracted tuberculosis, which led to twelve years of intermittent illness and left him permanently lame. He was the eldest son of Charles Erith, a mechanical engineer and his wife May.

Since his death, exhibitions of his work have been held by the Royal Academy of Arts (1976), Gainsborough's House, Sudbury (1979), Niall Hobhouse (1986) and Sir John Soane s Museum (2004) Early years Raymond Erith was born in London. Erith was appointed architect for the reconstruction of Downing Street (1958), elected a Royal Academician (1959) and served on the Royal Fine Art Commission (1960 73). His work demonstrates his continual interest in expanding the classical tradition to establish a progressive modern architecture, drawing on the past.

Cygnet Press w/ publisher's receipt & handwritten letter by Simon Rendall dated 21 November 1985 laid-in 1985 10 1/2' x 8 1/4' Raymond Charles Erith RA FRIBA (7 August 1904 30 November 1973) was a leading classical architect in England during the period dominated by the modern movement after the Second World War.

Fakers by Lucy Lennox