Thomas Gildart Mansell was born in Edgbaston, Warwickshire, England on 21 March 1898 and was the son of the architect Thomas Henry Mansell (1833-1911). He was articled to Frank Barlow Osborn (1840?-1907) and Alfred Reading of Osborn & Reading in Birmingham from 1882 to 1887. He then moved to London where he worked as an assistant in the offices of various architects including for three years Thomas Jerram Bailey (1843-1910). He qualified as an architect in 1892 and was elected an Associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects (ARIBA) later that year.
From c. 1892 he was in partnership with his father and his older brother, Edward Mansell (1860-1941) as Mansell & Mansell. They had an offices at 7 Temple Row, Birmingham.. Not long after the partnership was formed, Mansell senior retired leaving his sons to run the practice.
In the early 1900s Edward and Thomas Gildart Mansell were briefly in partnership with (?) Dixon as Mansell, Mansell & Dixon. They submitted designs for a competition for an extension to Birmingham Council House in 1906. The designs are illustrated in British Competitions in Architecture vol. 1, no. 10, September 1906 pp. 41-46. The partnership may have only been formed in order to enter this competition.
In 1908 Mansell & Mansell entered a competition to design municipal buildings in Bethnal Green, London. Their designs are illustrated in British Competitions in Architecture vol. 2, no. 15, February 1908 (pp. 120, 121). Mansell & Mansell ceased business in 1934.
Thomas Gildart Mansell died at his home, Upland Greys, Cowleigh Park, Malvern, Worcestershire on 11 August 1929
Mansell & Mansell designed, extended or altered a wide range of public, commercial, industrial and domestic buildings in the Birmingham area. Among new builds by them were Tudor Grange, a house for Alfred Lovekin at Blossomfield, Solihull (1887); a coach house and stables for James adie at the rear of 33 Hagley Road, Birmingham (1890); shops for Ward & Sons at St. Paul's Square, Birmingham (1891); premises for Lipscombe& Bayley at Stanhope Street, Birmingham (1891); warehouse and workshop for Adie & Lovekin Ltd., jewellers at Frederick Street/Regent Street, Birmingham (1895); premises for Mary Bolton, ships' births manufacturers at 19 Newhall Hill, Birmingham (1896); a house for Rev. G. Litting at Edgbaston Road, Birmingham (1896); two houses in Park Hill Road, Harbourne for S. J. Green (1897); a house for Alice Thompson at Hermitage Road, Edgbaston (1899); premises for the Ocean Accident Insurance Company at Waterloo Street/Temple Row West, Birmingham (1900); premises and shops for Simplex Steel Conduit Company at Maxstoke Street, Birmingham (1905); and a house for T. H. Smith at Stanmore Road, Edgbaston (1906).
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See also list of works by Mansell & Mansell in Evans, Allan. ‘Mansell and Mansell’ pp. 320-321 [see Bibliography below]
Directory of British Architects 1834-1914. Compiled by Antonia Brodie, et al. Volume 2: L-Z. London; New York: British Architectural Library, Royal Institute of British Architects/Continuum, 2001
Evans, Allan. ‘Mansell and Mansell’ in Birmingham’s Victorian and Edwardian Architects, edited by Phillada Ballard. Wetherby: Oblong Creative Ltd. for the Birmingham and West Midlands Group of the Victorian Society, 2009 pp. 313-322
‘Obituary’. The Builder vol. 137, 16 August 1929 p. 256