Colin Rosser Crickmay [commonly known as C. R. Crickmay] was born in Redhill, Surrey, England on 5 May 1904 and was the grandson of the Dorset architect George Rackstrow Crickmay (1831-1907) in whose London office the writer Thomas Hardy trained. In c.1922 C .R. Crickmay entered the Architectural Association Schools in London. After leaving the AA he joined a suburban London practice. He was made redundant during the economic depression of 1929 but soon after obtained a position as assistant in the London office of the Russian-born architect Serge Chermayeff (1900-1996). In 1933 Chermayeff formed a partnership with the emigré German architect Erich Mendelsohn (1887-1953) and Crickmay continued to work as an assistant to the two architects, producing perspective drawings and models for some of their projects.
In 1933 was allowed by Chermayeff and Mendelsohn work on his own private commission, Twitchells End in Jordans, Buckinghamshire. The house, which was designed in the European Modernist style, proved to be a critical success and featured in Architect and Building News in 1934, the Architectural Review and in F.R.S. Yorke's book The Modern House in England in 1937. On the strength of the favourable publicity he received with this project, Craickmay set up his own practice in London.
In 1937, with with his cousin, Hugh Waydelin Crickmay (1908-1978), who had studied at the Bartlett School of Architecture in London, he took over the family architectural business Crickmay & Sons both in Weymouth, Dorset where they practised until the 1970s.
C. R. Crickmay was elected an Associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects (ARIBA) in 1928. He retired from practice in 1972 and died on the Isle of Wight in 1999.
Boswell, David M. ‘Designing Twitchells End at Jordans, Buckinghamshire’. Twentieth Century Architecture [Houses issue] no. 12, 2015 pp. 64-83