Richard Norman Shaw RA (7 May 1831 – 17 November 1912), also known as Norman Shaw, was a British architect who worked from the 1870s to the 1900s, known for his country houses and for commercial buildings. He is considered to be among the greatest of British architects; his influence on architectural style was strongest in the 1880s and 1890s.
Early life and education
Shaw was born 7 May 1831 in Edinburgh, the sixth and last child of William Shaw (1780–1833), an Irish Protestant and army officer, and Elizabeth née Brown (1785–1883), from a family of successful Edinburgh lawyers. William Shaw died 2 years after his son’s birth, leaving debts. Two of Shaw’s siblings died young and a third in early adulthood. The family lived first in Annandale Street and then Haddington Place. Norman was educated at an academy for languages, located at 3 and 5 Hill Street Edinburgh until c.1842, then had one year of formal schooling in Newcastle, followed by being taught by his sister Janet. The eldest surviving child Robert had moved to London to work; the rest of the family followed about 1846, living in Middleton Road, Dalston. Norman began his apprenticeship almost immediately at an unknown architect’s practice.
By 1849, he had transferred to the London office of sixty-year-old William Burn, at whose practice Shaw remained for five years. He attended the evening lectures on architecture given at the Royal Academy of Arts by Charles Robert Cockerell. He met William Eden Nesfield at the Royal Academy, with whom he briefly partnered in some architectural designs. During 1854–1856, Shaw travelled with a Royal Academy scholarship, collecting sketches that were published as Architectural Sketches from the Continent, 1858. On his return to London he moved to George Edmund Street’s practice.
