Frank Scarlett was born on 5 June 1900 and trained as an architect at the University of London. He worked as Maxwell Ayrton’s assistant on the British Empire Exhibition held at Wembley, London in 1924-25, and assistant at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris in 1925. He was elected an Associate of the Royal Institute of British architects (ARIBA) in 1927 and in 1929 he was awarded the RIBA Alfred Bossom Gold Medal. He worked in Dublin for three years and in c.1930, with Henry Ingham Ashworth (1907-1991), formed the architectural partnership Scarlett & Ashworth (Frank Scarlett & Ingham Ashworth). The partnership was dissolved in c.1936 following which Scarlett worked alone.
Scarlett was elected a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects (FRIBA) in 1936. The address of his office was given as 19 Southampton Street, Bloomsbury Square, London in 1939. Scarlett died in Shepway, Kent in 1981.
Projects by the Frank Scarlett & Ingham Ashworth practice included offices for Shell Mex Ltd. in Kingston upon Hull (1931); alterations to Long Meadow, Chiswick Mall, London (1932); Starlock on Military Road in Rye, Sussex, for Col. & Mrs. Templar (1932); an office building in New Street, Kingston upon Hull (1933); and a house at 1 Cornwallis Avenue in Tonbridge, Kent, for C. V. Brooks (1936). A photograph of Starlock in Rye, designed by Frank Scarlett of Scarlett & Ashworth is illustrated in 'Decorative Art' 1933 (p.19). Other projects by Frank Scarlett in the 1930s included Ormonde Court in Putney, London (1935); Wellesley Court in Maida Vale, London (1936); and the Wallace Court block of flats at 300-308 Marylebone Road, London (1937).
Among his post-Second World War projects were offices and workshops for the Taylor Stoker Company, 189-191 Drummond Street, London (c.1950); flats and a studio at 37 & 38 Belsize Park, Hampstead, London (c.1952); the reconstruction of 117 Bishopsgate, London (c.1954); the interior of offices in London for Northern Aluminium Company Ltd., (1956); and agricultural cottage in Toldishall, Essex (c.1958).
Scarlett, Frank. Arts décoratifs 1925: A personal recollection of the Paris exhibition. London: St. Martin’s Press, 1975