Larger versions of these images are located at the foot of the page. Basic Biographical Details Name: | Benjamin Hall Blyth II | Designation: | Architect, Engineer | Born: | 25 May 1849 | Died: | 13 May 1917 | Bio Notes: | Benjamin Hall Blyth junior was born on 25 May 1849, the eldest son of the railway engineer Benjamin Hall Blyth and his wife Mary Dudgeon Wright. He was educated at Merchiston Castle School 1860-64. He gained the degree of MA from Edinburgh University and entered his father's firm as an apprentice in 1867. He was taken into partnership in 1871, at which point the practice was being run by his uncle Edward Laurence Ireland Blyth and George Miller Cunningham, his father having died from overwork in 1866. After Edward retired in 1886 and David Monro Westland, who had joined the firm in 1863 and had risen to the post of chief assistant, was taken into partnership, the practice title changing to Cunningham, Blyth & Westland. When Cunningham retired in 1893, the firm was renamed as Blyth & Westland. It remained thus after 1909 when Benjamin Hall Blyth junior's nephew Benjamin Hall Blyth III was taken into partnership, but adopted the final title of Blyth & Blyth when Westland retired in 1913.
Benjamin Hall Blyth junior was consulting engineer to the North British and Great North of Scotland Railways, and Lieutenant Colonel of the Engineer and Railway Staff Corps. He was elected a Member of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1877, a member of the Council in 1900, and Vice-President in 1911, and in 1914 had the distinction of being the first practising engineer in Scotland to be elected President of the Institution.
In 1872 Blyth married Millicent Taylor of Dodsworth Hall, Yorkshire: she predeceased him on 12 September 1914. He died on 13 May 1917 at Kaimend, North Berwick, leaving moveable estate of £31,311 15s 5d and was survived by his daughter Elsie Winifred Blyth (Mrs Couper).
His nephew, Benjamin Hall Blyth III, continued the practice thereafter. | Private and Business AddressesThe following private or business addresses are associated with this architect, engineer: | | Address | Type | Date from | Date to | Notes |  | Kaimend, North Berwick, East Lothian, Scotland | Business | | 1917 | |  | 135, George Street, Edinburgh, Scotland | Business | Before 1867 | 1917 | |
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ReferencesBibliographic ReferencesThe following books contain references to this architect, engineer: | | Author(s) | Date | Title | Part | Publisher | Notes |  | Bailey, Rebecca M | 1996 | Scottish architects' papers: a source book | | Edinburgh: The Rutland Press | |  | Blyth & Blyth | 1948 | A history of the firm of Blyth & Blyth, chartered civil engineers, consulting structural engineers … 1848-1948 | | Edinburgh: C J Cousland | |  | Glendinning, M, MacInnes, R and MacKechnie, A | 1996 | A History of Scottish Architecture | | | |
Images © All rights reserved. Edinburgh and the Lothians at the opening of the twentieth century / by A. Eddington. Contemporary biographies / edited by W.T. Pike |