Bruce Allsopp

Harold Bruce Allsopp FSA FRIBA (4 July 1912 – 22 February 2000) was a British architectural historian, educator and publisher.¹

Howard Bruce Allsopp was born in 1912 in Oxford to Heny Allsopp, a historian, poet and vice principal of Ruskin College, and his wife Elizabeth May Allsopp (née Robertson).¹²³⁴ Bruce Allsopp attended Crimsworth School and Manchester Grammar School⁵ before studying architecture at the University of Liverpool School of Architecture under Sir Charles Reilly, Sir Patrick Abercrombie and Lionel Bailey Budden.⁵ He served in the Royal Engineers during World War II and taught at Leeds School of Art from 1935 to 1946.⁶ During 1935 he married Florence Cyrilla Woodroffe.¹ From 1946 he taught at Newcastle University School of Architecture (originally part of Durham University),⁷ where he held a variety of posts, including senior lecturer and director of architectural studies.⁸⁶ In 1957 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects.⁹

Allsopp was a co-founder of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain in 1955 and served as its first chair. In 1962 he founded the Oriel Press.¹⁰ In 1970 he was elected as the Master of the Art Workers' Guild.¹¹¹²

Allsopp said in Architect and Patron:¹³

The architect is tied to humanity in a way which the painter, poet or musician is not. This is, in a way, a limitation, but it is also the chief glory of his art.

• Art and the Nature of Architecture 1952¹⁴¹⁵
• Decoration Furniture Vol. 1. The English Tradition 1952¹⁶¹⁷
• A History of Renaissance Architecture 1959¹⁴
• A General History of Architecture 1960¹⁴
• A History of Classical Architecture 1965¹⁴¹⁸¹⁹
• The Great Tradition of Western Architecture 1968²⁰
• Historic Architecture of Newcastle upon Tyne 1969¹⁴
• Modern Architecture of Northern England 1969¹⁴
• The Study of Architectural History 1970¹⁴
• Romanesque Architecture: the Romanesque achievement 1971
• A Modern Theory of Architecture 1977¹⁴
• The Garden Earth. The Case for Ecological Morality 1972⁸
• Towards a Humane Architecture 1974¹⁴²¹
• The Larousse Guide to the Architecture of Europe 1985
• Spirit of Europe: a subliminal history 1997¹⁴