Edith Gillian Harrison [also known as Mrs. H. St. John Harrison; and as Gillian Harrison] was born Edith Gillian Cooke in Streatham, Surrey [now London], England in 1898 and trained as an architect at the Architectural Association in London between 1917 and 1922. She was one of the first four female students to attend the AA and was awarded the AA Diploma in c.1922.
In 1923 she married the architect Henry (Harry) St John Harrison (1894-1889) and in 1924 was elected an Associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects (ARIBA). In 1931 she became the first woman to be elected a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects (FRIBA)
During the 1920s and 1930s she was a partner with her husband in the architectural firm Cooke & Harrison in London.
A drawing and ground- and first-floor plans of proposed houses at Lawn Road in Hampstead, London, designed by Cooke & Harrison is illustrated in 'Decorative Art' 1930 (p.58)
With Gertrude Leverkus, (1898-1989), who was one of the first three women to be elected an ARIBA, Edith Gillian Harrison was instrumental in the formation of a Women’s Committee of the RIBA 1932.
Her address was given as 2, Gray's Inn Square,. London in 1924 and 1935; 5 Verulam buildings, Gray's Inn, London in 1935 and 1939; 1 Babmaes Street, Jermyn Street, London in 1950; and 36 Gosfield Hall, Halstead, Essex in 1974. She died on 19 October 1974.
The RIBA Library has a biographical file on Edith Gillian Harrison which is available on request from the Enquiry Desk
She designed "Red Willows", a house in Littlestone, Kent in 1933. With her husband she also designed three more houses in Littlestone.
AA Women in Architecture 1917-2017. Edited by Elizabeth Darling and Lynne Walker.London: Architectural Association and the authors, 2017
Franz, Nellie Alden. English Women Enter the Professions. Cincinnati: Privately published, 1965
'Obituary'. RIBA Journal vol. 82, no. 4, April 1975 p. 9