Stedman Blower was founded in 1895 by Arthur Stedman (1868-1958), a son of Farnham and near contemporary of Sir Edwin Lutyens (1869-1944). His career flourished in the country house boom up to the Great War, just as Ned Lutyens had, moving onto larger public works in the great expansion of municipal works projects in the interwar period at the end of his career. He had a delicate touch and established the credentials of the company then, as now, in the quality of the buildings and their designs. He completed a number of fine works in West Surrey, including his own offices and the Mackintosh Almshouses in Farnham and some lovely Edwardian country houses.

Arthur Stedman was born in Normandy, Guildford, in 1858, from a family of wheelwrights, apprenticing as an architect in the traditional way with a firm of Farnham builders and attending night classes at Farnham Art School. He finally set up his own office in 1895 at the age of 28 and was elected LRIBA in 1910 and a Fellow before the War. He was Guildford Diocesan Surveyor from 1925-1950 and taught at Farnham School of Art (now SIAD University College). He was also President of the South Eastern Society of Architects and Founding President of Farnham Cricket Club. He died in 1958 at the age of 90.

Leonard Stedman (1900-1980), took over from his father at the end of WW2, having been apprenticed as a pupil in Sir Edwin Lutyens’ offices in London as a young man. The period of his career matches that of another Farnham born architect, Harold Falkner, now recognized as a significant contributor to the revival of vernacular architecture in England during the period when Modernism held full sway. Leonard’s career was truncated by war and austerity and buffeted by the competing cultures of modernism and tradionalism, which seems to have confused rather than inspired him. He did however run a successful small general practice and completed some interesting buildings.

Leonard was born in 1900 and attended Farnham Grammar School and Cranleigh Boys School, after which he attended the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College, London. He spent his War years in the Royal Artillery, the Pay Corps and Garrison Engineer. He died in 1980 at the age of 80.

Michael Blower (born 1929) ran the practice from 1964 to 1995. Michael came to Stedman & Blower (as AJ & LR Stedman was renamed) to reconnect with traditional architectural forms and urban spaces. The office took on more conservation work and championed the vernacular architecture and heritage of West Surrey. He completed a number of fine restorations and sensitive alterations to historic buildings, receiving a Civic Trust Award and an RICS/Times Newspaper Award, while retaining a compact general architectural practice, with an almost exclusively Surrey-based clientele. He also worked on several projects with renowned architect, Roderick Gradidge (1929-2000), jointly winning the RIBA Award for Design Excellence.

R. Gradidge obituaries:
Independent | Guardian

Damien Blower (born 1968) attended the Royal Grammar School, Guildford, before undergraduate and postgraduate degrees at the Bartlett School of Architecture (where Leonard Stedman had studied) and the Institute of Archaeology, University College, London, where he completed a Masters Thesis on the 'Social and Architectural Development of the Roman Palace'. In 1992, he moved to Los Angeles to study for a Master of Architecture at the renowned and avant-garde Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), where he taught in the Undergraduate School and was appointed Assistant to the Graduate Director. He then spent a year as an intern in Frank Gehry's offices in Santa Monica.

Damien returned to England and Stedman Blower in 1996 as a Partner and, on incorporation in 2000, as Principal. Since then he has grown the business organically from just two or three to a team of ten and has expanded the national reputation of the business as a niche architectural practice specialising in designing new and retrofitted buildings within locations of significant cultural heritage. Stedman Blower has received some national press in this period for some its better buildings in this period, including a 60 minute featured barn conversion on Channel 4's Grand Designs, that went out to 4 million viewers in 2003. The team also received numerous press features in half a dozen national titles and has won over fifteen design awards during the period. The team also completed their first project internationally, a barn conversion in the Dordogne, France.

In 2004, Damien set up The Blower Foundation (for Cultural Connection), a registered UK non-profit charitable trust. The Foundation is closely associated with Stedman Blower and carries out charitable activities within the field of cultural heritage in the built environment and awards educational grants. Since 2004, the Foundation has raised over £30,000 to achieve these aims.


Robert Blower (born 1960), attended All Hallows RC School prior to undergraduate and postgraduate studies in Architecture & Engineering at Kingston, South Bank, Greenwich, and the University of Westminster. He trained at Andrews Downie Partners and Lister Grillet Harding, both in London, before joining Stedman Blower in 1990. In 1996 he became a Partner with Damien, his brother, and then Design Director from 2000, when the Partnership became a limited company.

Robert has been with Stedman Blower for over 25 years and has been responsible for some it's most successful traditional design projects and those involving buildings or locations of important cultural heritage and with significant conservation issues. In 2007, he stepped into a reduced role running a ‘special projects’ studio working with a handful of long-term and valued clients of the practice, but is no longer involved in the day-to-day operation of the portfolio of projects in-hand.

Stedman Blower continues under the custodianship of the fourth generation and looks forward to still greater things as it soon approaches one hundred and twenty five years in continuous practice in 2020