Dictionary of Irish Architects 1720 - 1940

Architect and painter.  An item entitiled 'An Irish Architect in Cambridge' which appears in in 'An Irishman's Diary' in the Irish Times of 21 November 1928 notes that Goerge Kennedy was responsible for the completion of Bodley's Buildings at King's College, Cambridge. and continues: 'The sunken path to the door, between low walls of stone, reminded me of the charming place which Mr Kennedy designed and owns at Cashelnagore, in county Donegal, where a similar path beautifies the garden.'

George Lawrence Kennedy originally studied painting at the Slade School in London and enrolled as a student at the Académie Julian in Paris in 1906.  It is not clear where he studied architecture, but he would appear to have done so between 1911 and 1916.  The English census records a George Kennedy, 'painting artist' at an address in Gray's Inn Road, London, in 1911, but the George Kennedy of North End Road, Hampstead, who exhibited a design for the loggia at Tremedda Farm near Zennor in Cornwall at the Royal Academy in 1916 is described in the catalogue as an architect.  He may also be the George Lawrence Kennedy who served in the Royal Garrison Artillery during the First World War.   In 1920 he formed a partnership with Frederick Bayliss Nightingale (Kennedy & Nightingale)..  The partnership lasted until the end of the 1930s.  Kennedy subsequently taught at Gordonstoun School in Scotland, where he designed the Cumming House in 1939.  He died in 1954. 

Kennedy was a lifelong friend of the painter Henry Lamb and wrote a monograph on him, published by Ernest Benn in 1924.  Lamb, who painted a portrait of Kennedy, claimed to detect 'a certain divine strain in that profoundly unkempt creature'..



References

All information in this entry not otherwise attributed is from Dictionary of Scottish Architects http://www.scottisharchitects.org.uk/ and  Bonham's sale catalogue https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/24593/lot/47/


1 work entries listed in chronological order for KENNEDY, GEORGE LAWRENCE


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Building: CO. DONEGAL, CASHELNAGOR (GORTAHORK)
Date: ?
Nature: 'The sunken path to the door [at Bodley's Building, Cambridge], between low walls of stone, reminded me of the charming place which Mr Kennedy designed and owns at Cashelnagore, in county Donegal, where a similar path beautifies the garden.'
Refs: 'An Irishman's Diary' in Irish Times, 21 Nov 1928.