John Ladds was the architect who designed the alabaster war memorial that was installed inside St. Paul’s Church and dedicated in October 1922. He was born in Ellington, Huntingdonshire (near Cambridge) on 22 April 1835, so by the time the war started he was already 79 and when he was designing the memorial, he was well into his eighties and was still working as an architect.
John lived with his wife, Cecilia (née Townshend Kent), and two single, adult daughters at 93 Pemberton Road, Harringay, just a few streets away from the church, where he was a member of the congregation. The family had been living just off Gray’s Inn Road in 1901 and had moved to Harringay by 1911.
John was baptised on 10 October 1836 in Winwick, Huntingdonshire. The son of a gentleman farmer, John was educated at a boarding school, the Eaton Socon Academy in Bedfordshire. He qualified as an architect before moving to London in the 1860s and marrying Cecilia, who was three years older than him and from Barnet, on 19 January 1867 at St. Clement Danes in Westminster. They had four children in total and the eldest, Sidney Inskip Ladds, followed in his father’s footsteps to become an architect himself and spent time as the Diocesan Surveyor for Ely.
John spent much of his working life designing churches, church schools and related buildings in the north of England and the Midlands, and some of his works were mentioned by Pevsner in his guides. Some of his drawings are available to view here.
John Ladds died on 15 February 1926, aged 90.
Harringay Remembers 