AYRE, DAVID WICKHAM

Architect, of Cork and London, active in the first and second decades of the twentieth century. David Wickham Ayre, who was born in Ballylanders, Co. Limerick, in 1909 or 1910,(1) was apprenticed to W.H. HILL & SON in Cork circa 1900 and after serving a five-year pupilage remained as an assistant until 1906. He then went to London, where he worked in the practice of MORRIS & MORRIS & amp; RYAN from 1906 to 1909, then in the offices of Young & Hall and Sidney Kiffen Greenslade. While he was based in London he attended the Royal Academy Schools and travelled in France and Belgium. Following the outbreak of the First World War, he enlisted in the armed forces; in 1915 he received the commission of 2nd Lieutenant in the Royal Engineers, Kent Fortress.(2) There is no further information about him in the records of the RIBA after this date.

RIBA: passed preliminary exam, June 1905;(3) passed first in intermediate exam, November 1906;(4) elected associate, 12 June 1911, having been proposed by WILLIAM HENRY HILL WILLIAM HENRY HILL , ARTHUR HILL  ARTHUR HILL and W.A. Pite.

Addresses: 71 Patrick Street, Cork, 1905-1906;(5) 11 Gray's Inn Square, London, 1911; 24 Alexander Street, Westbourne Grove, London, 1911; 13 Ordnance Road, St John's Wood, London, 1914.

All information in this entry not otherwise accounted for is from Directory of British Architects 1834-1914 (RIBA 2001), I, 78.

(1) UK census, 1911.
(2) RIBAJ 22 (1914-1915), 8,81.
(2) RIBAJ 12 (1904-5), 570.
(3) RIBAJ 14 (1906-7), 83.
(4) See notes 2 and 3, above; a Mrs Ayre, presumably his widowed mother, is recorded at this address in Guy's Cork Almanac and Directory for 1915.