“[Statutory registration] has not yet been achieved, but the status of the architect is improving. For better or for worse, he is becoming first and foremost a professional man. There are some who regard with genuine regret, even with alarm, this stereotyping of one of the fine arts into professional moulds. Unfortunately it seems to have become inevitable.”

Martin Briggs, writing here in 1927, seems to embody the RIBA member of whom JA Gotch writes seven years later as having, “strongly and not unnaturally, objected to a process of levelling-up which would give a definite status to ’the mere ignorant, though bold pretender’.”

The fight for statutory registration of architects was a long, hard-fought one. It began in 1791 when some of the leading architects of the time, including Robert Adam and John Soane, met in the Thatched House Tavern and formed the rather exclusive Architects’ Club. Various other clubs and societies came and went through the 1700 and 1800s, all seeking to define what an “architect” was.

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