Mary Beaumont Medd was born Mary Beaumont Crowley in Bradford Yorkshire England on 4 August 1907. By 1911 she had moved with her family to Letchworth in Herefordshire. After leaving school she trained as an architect at the Architectural Association in London and in 1934 was elected an Associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects (ARIBA). In the 1930s she collaborated with Judith Ledeboer (1901-1990) in the design of a small house. She also worked with Cecil George Kemp (1897-1973) in the design of three houses, 102, 104 and 106 Orchard Road, in Tewin, Hertfordshire. In c.1940 she worked with Erno Goldfinger (1902-1987) on the design of a flexible, prefabricated nursery and other schemes.
In 1941 she was employed as an architect by Hertfordshire County Council for whom she began designing educational buildings. The first school she designed was Burleigh infants' school in Cheshunt. One of her fellow architects at Hertfordshire County Council was David Leslie Medd (1917-2009) whom she married in 1949. Soon after, they moved to the architects and buildings department of the Ministry of Education. The couple subsequently became among the leading school designers in post-war Britain.
After retiring from the Ministry of Education in the 1960s, she acted as a consultant on school design to education authorities in Columbia, Pakistan, Venezuela, Botswana, El Salvador, Ethiopia, and elsewhere. With her husband, she was awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1964.
Her address was given as Sewell's Orchard, Tewin, Hertfordshire in 1939; and 30 Frognall Lane, London in 1950. She died in Knebworth, Hertfordshire on 6 June 2005.
A biographical file on Mary Beaumont Medd is available on request the RIBA Library, London.
AA Women in Architecture 1917-2017. London: The Architectural Association and the authors, 2017
'Architect's own single-storey house at Hamer Green, Hertfordshire'. Architectural Design October 1954 pp. 294-300. [Architects: David Medd and Mary Crowley]
'Burleigh Infants School, Cheshunt, 1946-1947'. Architecture d'aujourd'hui no. 339, March/April 2002 pp. 94-95 [Architects: Mary Crowley, David Medd and Bruce Martin]
Burke, Catherine. A Life in Education and Architecture: Mary Beaumont Medd. Aldershot, England: Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 2013
Burke, Catherine. ‘About looking: vision, transformation, and the education of the eye in discourses of school renewal past and present’. British Educational Research Journal vol. 36, No. 1, February 2010 pp. 65-82
Franklin, Geraint. '"Built-in variety": David and Mary Medd and the Child-Centred Primary School, 1944-80'. Architectural History Vol. 55, 2012 pp. 321-367
Gould, Jeremy. Modern Houses in Britain, 1919-1939. London: Society of Architectural Historians, 1977
Lacomba Montes, Paula and Uribe, Alejandro Campos. 'From classrooms to centres: Mary and David Medd's contribution to postwar school design in Britain.' ARQ: Architectural Research Quarterly vol. 24, no. 3, September 2020 pp. 251-264.
Medd, David L. and Crowley, Mary. 'British school architects examine our work: a report.' Progressive Architecture March 1960 pp. 125-157
Powers, Alan. Modern. The Modern Movement in Britain. London: Merrell, 2005
'Project for Cheetham Crumpsall Community Education Centre, Manchester'. Arkitekten (Copenhagen) no. 25, 7 December 1970 pp. 595-599 [Architects: David and Mary Medd]
Scheme for evacuation camps for mothers and children, by E. Goldfinger, Mary Crowley, members of the A. A. S. T. A. Evacuation Committee, and Anne Parker' Architect & Building News 27 October 1939 p. 88
Shariff, Yasmin, 'Schools pioneer'. Architects' Journal vol. 237, no. 12, March 28 2013 pp. 63-67. [A review of A Life in Education and Architecture: Mary Beaumont Medd. (Aldershot, England: Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 2013)]
Walker, Lynne and Saint, Andrew. 'Mary Medd 1907-2005.' RIBA Journal vol. 112, no. 12, December 2005 Dec p. xvi (between pp. 64 and 65).
Yorke, F. R. S. The Modern House in England. London: The Architectural Press, 1937