Ellis Herbert Pritchett was born in Chiswick in 1861, the son of Robert Taylor Pritchett and his wife Louisa. His father is a most interesting character who at the time of Ellis’s birth was a rifle manufacturer for the War Department employing 150 men and two boys. He later went on to be a water colourist.
Ellis was articled to the prestigious Scottish architect Charles Forster Hayward from 1880-1884. He then took a year off to travel through France and Belgium before setting up in his own practice in 1885.
He appears to have arrived in Swindon in the late 1880s and at the time of the 1891 census he was living in Ivy Cottage, Purton with his mother and a little niece, Johanna C. Taylor who was just a year old.
He became partners with Charles and Ernest Bishop and the firm of Bishop and Pritchett was established as auctioneers and estate agents by 1893, a year after he married Mary Campbell Maclean.
Pritchett was Chief Officer of the Swindon Fire brigade and like so many of these professional men he was a freemason, joining the Royal Sussex Lodge of Emulation in 1890 and Gooch Lodge the following year.
Among the buildings Pritchett designed was the Euclid Street High Elementary School and several houses on The Sands and Bath Road.
Ellis died suddenly on March 16, 1905 at Poole and his body was brought back to Swindon where he was buried on March 22. His wife Mary Campbell Blythe (she later remarried) and her parents Dr John Campbell and Ellen Maclean are buried in this large, double plot E8371 and E8372.
Radnor Street Cemetery 