Peter John Blundell Harland [also known as P. J. B. Harland] was born on 16 April 1900. He studied a the Architectural Association Schools in London, and remained as a teacher. He also practised as an architect with an office in London. He designed houses for the composers Sir Arthur Bliss and Gerald Finzi. A painting by Edward Wadsworth (1889-1949) of the house for Arthur Bliss is reproduced in The Book of the Modern House, edited by Patrick Abercrombie (1939 p. 224a). Plans and photographs of the house are also illustrated on pp. 244-245. Harland also designed hospitals and wrote on hospital ighting.
He was elected an Associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects (ARIBA) in 1930 and a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects (FRIBA) in 1936.
His address was given as 129 Crawford Road, London in 1928; Lulworth House, Langlay Road, Surbiton Hill, Surrey in 1934; and 9 Manchester Square, London in 1938 and 1939. He died in Lewes, Sussex in 1973.
Pen Pits, a house for the composer Sir Arthur Bliss in Penselwood, Somerset (1934-35); a house in Ashmansworth, Hampshire for the composer Gerald Finzi (1937); Tolworth Isolation Hospital in Tolworth, Surrey (1936), the South Middlesex Fever Hospital in Isleworth (1937); and an extension to Erith County Grammar School in Belvedere, Kent (1952)
The Book of the Modern House. A Panoramic Survey of Contemporary Domestic Design. Edited by Patrick Abercrombie. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1939
‘Extension of Erith County Grammar School at the Oaks, Belvedere, Kent’. Architect and Building News 4 September 1952 pp. 288-291 [Architect: P. J. B. Harland]
Harland, P. J. B. ‘Hospital lighting’. The Journal of State Medicine vol. 44, no. 4, April, 1936, pp. 235-239
Powers, Alan. ‘Harmonious mansions: two composers’ houses in the 1930s’. Country Life vol. 178, 29 August 1985 pp. 559-563 [Houses designed by P. J. B. Harland for the composers Arthur Bliss and Gerald Finzi]
Powers, Alan. Modern. The Modern Movement in Britain. London: Merrell, 2005 pp. 134-135
‘South Middlesex Fever Hospital, Isleworth’. Architectural Review August 1938 p.47 [Architect: P. J. B. Harland]
Yorke, F. R. S. The Modern House in England. London: The Architectural Press, 1937 pp. 68-70