Lorimer & Matthew was formed in January 1927 when John Fraser Matthew, who had begun as an apprentice in Robert Stodart Lorimer’s practice in 1893 and had been office manager since c.1899, was made a partner in recognition of the immense work-load pressures falling on them both. However, Lorimer died soon after, in September 1929, and Matthew became sole partner.
Following Lorimer’s death, at the time of the Wall Street crash, the practice ran into financial difficulties: the purchase of Lorimer's interest from Lady Lorimer had cost Matthew £4,000, and he lacked Lorimer’s skill at attracting new business. When Hew Lorimer, an architectural student at Edinburgh College of Art, applied for admission to his father's firm in 1929, he was told that 'Your father and I had no such arrangement' and the financial situation was cited as a reason for the refusal, although Matthew was also later to say that 'he'd had enough of Lorimer' and 'one Lorimer was enough for a life-time'. By this time the office was seriously short of work: the demand for churches and large houses had disappeared and important commissions, such as the Reid Memorial Church and, later on, Lothian House, were lost to competitors (Leslie Grahame Thomson and Stewart Kaye respectively). Staff members were paid off, including assistant Harry Hubbard, and Matthew’s eldest son, Robert, began assisting at the firm from 1930 after graduating from Edinburgh College of Art, initially working for no pay.
Matthew’s youngest son, Stuart Russell Matthew, began as an assistant at Lorimer & Matthew in 1934-35, taking over from Robert who by that time was only helping out part-time and who left to take up the post of assistant architect with the Department of Health for Scotland in 1936. Stuart was educated at the Edinburgh Institution and at the Royal College of Art in London, and shared his father's interest in fine craftsmanship, much of the practice being concerned with small-scale armorial work. Stewart continued at Lorimer & Matthew after passing the qualifying exam in June 1937 and was taken into partnership in January 1946.
While working together in 1950, both Stuart and his father suffered nervous breakdowns. For John Matthew, this was his second breakdown (the first being in 1926, shortly before being made a partner, as a result of the stresses of the Scottish National War Memorial project), and it sent him into semi-retirement. While working on a stressful project for a hotel at Bridge of Lochay in 1949-50, Stuart, in turn, had his own ‘collapse’, leaving his brothers, Robert and Douglas, to try to help their father keep Lorimer & Matthew afloat. Stuart’s partnership with his father was dissolved shortly thereafter, after John Matthew, having taken over the design work Stuart had done on the Thistle Foundation’s housing for severely disabled ex-servicemen, insisted on changing Stuart’s design. Stuart subsequently merged his practice with that of David Carr, while John Matthew practiced independently for about a year, finally retiring completely in 1951. Lorimer & Matthew was wound up in all but name, Stuart Matthew completing such work as was still in hand and assigning only a minority of new projects to the practice, such as Warriston Crematorium (1956). A much greater workload was carried out by Carr & Matthew, which remained relatively successful throughout the 1950s until its closure in 1959 when David Carr moved to set up his own practice.
During the 1960s, with his practice ebbing away because of his continued poor health, Stuart took in work farmed out by his brother Robert Matthew who had founded his own practice in 1953. After failing to make an effective contribution on larger projects, including development plans for Dundee University and Glasgow Royal College (later Strathclyde University), Robert provided Stuart with less urgent, small-scale or family-related projects, including work on Robert’s office and flat at 31 Regent Terrace and the modest job of designing a modern front elevation for a rebuilding scheme for the Army and Navy Club at St James Square, Westminster.
In August 1963, Stuart suffered his most devastating nervous breakdown while working with Robert on the design for the reconstruction of Loretto School Chapel, which had been delegated to Stuart due to the longstanding association of Lorimer & Matthew with the School. The decision was taken to absorb the project fully into Robert Matthew, Johnson-Marshall & Partners and Robert effectively took over Stuart’s office and most of his staff, and thereafter kept Stuart supplied with a succession of small jobs.
'Biography authored by the Dictionary of Scottish Architects Compilation Team.'