Frederick Thomas was one of several children to Thomas Pilkington, architect, and Jane Butterworth of Stamford, England. The family moved to Edinburgh in 1854. In 1855 T.Pilkington & Son, architects and surveyors, were living and working at 10 Dundas Street in Edinburgh's Second New Town. Frederick studied mathematics under Professor Philip Kelland at the University of Edinburgh, passed his exams in 1858 and was Hamilton prizewinner in Logic, but did not bother to graduate. He signed the University Matriculation Register 1856/7 as of Stamford. He married in 1858 and lived at Mary Cottage in the suburb of Trinity in the north of Edinburgh. His wife died in childbirth in March 1861 and Frederick Thomas remarried to Elizabeth Cropley from Ely, Cambridgeshire in August 1861 with whom he raised a family of five children, living successively in Cumin Place, Eton Terrace, Egremont House in Dick Place which he built for himself. His family comprised Ernest born 1864, architect, died during the First World War, Maud Elizabeth, a miniaturist; Ethel Mary; Mabel Jane; and Frederick Percy, born 1874. In later life he lived in 17 Carlton Terrace on Calton Hill. This is a Georgian townhouse by the architect William Henry Playfair rather than a building of his own design. After an illustrious but troubled professional life he returned to England in later life and died in Pinner on 18 September 1898, leaving £6,609.
Architect
Frederick Thomas Pilkington's father practised as an architect, and he himself was an architect in Edinburgh from 1855 to 1883. In Edinburgh, Pilkington concentrated on churches for the Free Church of Scotland, where worship focused not on a nave and altar, but on the pulpit and the "Word of God". Pilkington developed a new style of church building which accorded with the fashionable Gothic style but was adapted for the worship needs of the Free Church of Scotland. In 1867 he went into partnership with John Murray Bell to form Pilkington & Bell, Bell providing the structural know-how, Pilkington providing the design flair. Pilkington adhered closely to Ruskin's principals, and in the High Victorian tradition which they promoted he evolved a highly personal style by mixing northern medieval elements with those from the Gothic architecture of Northern Italy as published by Ruskin and George, Edmund Street. His work featured polychrome stone, chunky rustication and lavish external carving of Venetian medieval buildings combined with French rose windows, decorated tracery, high-pitched roofs and deep, rain-conscious porches.
Notable buildings
Buildings in Edinburgh
Barclay Church 1862-4
38 Dick Place, 1865–1870
48–50 Dick Place, 1864
158–164 Grove Street, 1864
Craigend Park, 1867–69
1–7 Coltbridge Terrace, 1869
129–131 Grange Loan, 1872
Daniel Stewart's Boarding House, 1874
3 Queensferry Terrace, Dean Park House Stable Block, 1874
8 Spylaw Road, mid-1870s
39–51 Deanhaugh Street, 1880–81
Moray Free Church, South Back of the Canongate, 1862
In 1883, Pilkington moved to London and began work on the Army and Navy Hotel on Victoria Street and started to design residential flats for both the Artisans, Labourers & General Dwellings Company and for the middle-classes. This second category of flats include Campden Hill Court in Kensington and York Mansions in Battersea. Pilkington did not see the completion of York Mansions, his last commission, as he died before its completion in 1901.
