ERIC BEDFORD: BORN 1909
BT TOWER ARCHITECT

Eric Bedford had a distinguished career as a public sector architect, rising to become in 1951 the Chief Architect of the Ministry of Public Building and Works. At 42 he was the youngest perdon to have been appointed to this post. He produced striking decorative archways along the Mall for Queen Elizabeth’s 1953 coronation. But his most striking contribution to London was the Post Office Tower, now known as the BT Tower. At 581 feet it was, when built in 1964, London’s tallest building. Its extremely elegant design, with some of the central core exposed at high level, and with a revolving restaurant above, has made it into a London landmark.

No longer required for telecommunications, the BT Tower was sold in in 2024 for £275m to the US hotel company MCR Hotels. They previously turned the iconic TWA Terminal at JFK Airport, New York, designed by Eero Saarinen, into a TWA-themed hotel. So Eric Bedford’s wonderful building will have a second life.

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LIFE

Eric Bedford was born near Halifax in Yorkshire. He was educated at Thornton Grammar School and then undertook an architectural apprenticeship in Leicester. In 1934 he won a RIBA medal for his design for a railway terminal. Two years later he joined the Ministry of Public Building and Works, and, after the Second World War, was appointed its youngest-ever Chief Architect. At the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, Bedford had responsibility for significant elements of the overall design, including the Coronation Arches.

Given its importance to government communications, the BT Tower was designed to withstand nuclear attack, and in 1971 it was relatively undamaged by a bomb placed in the tower's revolving restaurant by the Angry Brigade. Bedford's comment was recorded as; "I made it to last, bombers or not". In addition to the tower, he oversaw or undertook a number of other important governmental commissions – both within the UK, including the departmental buildings on Marsham Street, Westminster, and offices for MPs within the Palace of Westminster; and overseas, including embassy buildings in Warsaw, Washington, D.C. and Jakarta.

After retiring to France to be near his daughter, Bedford returned to England following the death of his wife in 1977. He lived for many years in the village of Hanley Swan near Malvern, Worcestershire, and died in a nursing home in Worcester in 2001.