Law, Brian R.
Building Oxford’s heritage. Symm & Company from 1815. Foreword by Sir Howard colvin. With an introduction by David Sturdy.
Oxford, Prelude Promotion 1998.
Full Description
Folio. 135 + (1)pp, many photo ills (mostly colour). Publisher’s cloth, in dustwrapper. No ownership inscription but Gavin Stamp’s copy.
History of an Oxford-based building firm, founded in 1815 by David Evans, carried on from 1846 by his son-in-law Joshua Robinson Symm, and subsequently by Symm’s two senior employees and their descendants. The firm had been continuously employed from the 1820s onwards in building work for Oxford colleges, latterly specialising in the restoration of their historic fabric, and had also won contracts for the construction of the University’s science laboratories, for the building of local churches and schools, and for the adaptation of Oxfordshire country houses to present-day requirements. The fact that both Daniel Evans and J.R.Symm were Methodists but were nonetheless thought trustworthy enough to be employed by the Masters and Fellows of colleges that were at the time wholly Church of England in their personnel says much for their firm’s reliability and for the skills of their work force.