Bower, Stephen Ernest Dykes 1903 - 1944

Stephen Ernest Dykes Bower was born in Gloucester, England on 18 April 1903 and studied English at Merton College Oxford from where he graduated in 1924. At the suggestion of Sir Ninian Comper, he then studied architecture at the Architectural Association in London. In 1931 he set up his own independent architectural practice in London. Two years later, in 1933, he relocated the practice to Quendon Court, near Saffron Walden, Essex, in 1933, where he remained for the rest of his life. He specialised in the building and restoration of churches, and his first significant commission was the rebuilding in in 1936 of All Saints' Church,in Hockerill, near Bishop's Stortford, which had all but been destroyed by fire.

During World War Two he served in the Ministry of Town and Country Planning in Cambridge.  Following the war he resumed his practice. His next important project was a new high Altar for St. Paul's Cathedral in London. It was commissioned by Godfrey Allen, the surveyor of St Paul's in 1949 and completed in 1958. Other commissions included restoration of bomb-damaged churches and other buildings; the completion of the cathedral church of St Edmundsbury in Suffolk in 1945; and, in 1979, the completion with additions of the chapel of Lancing College designed by Richard Cromwell Carpenter (1812-1855) in the 1850s.  In 1951 Dykes Bower was appointed surveyor of the fabric of Westminster Abbey, a position he held until 1973

In addition to his architectural work Dykes Bower was a notable designer of candlesticks altar frontals, vestments and painted decoration. Alan Powers observes that his skill in reconstructing Victorian painted decoration was displayed at G. F. Bodley's church of St John, Tuebrook, Liverpool, in 1967 [DNB].  Dykes

Bower died at Quendon Court, near Saffron Walden, Essex on 11 November 1994