Lorimer, Sir Robert Stodart (1864–1929). Scots architect. Articled to Rowand Anderson, he later worked with Bodley and MacLaren. He commenced practice in Edinburgh in 1893 and established his reputation with a series of cottages in the vernacular style, so much so that he was recognized by Hermann Muthesius as one of the most significant architects of his time, doing for Scotland what R. N. Shaw and his contemporaries had done for England a generation before. His interest in the Arts-and-Crafts movement led him to design several distinguished country-houses (e.g. Rowallan, Ayrshire (1903), and Ardkinglass, Argyll (1906)), and by 1905 he was unassailable as the top architect in Scotland for restorations, renovations, garden design, and new houses. In 1906 he designed his first important church, St Peter's, Morningside, Edinburgh (completed 1929), followed by the Chapel of the Knights of the Thistle, St Giles's Cathedral, Edinburgh (1909—an exquisite work, earning him his Knighthood in 1911). He designed several memorials and war cemeteries, but his undisputed masterpiece is the Free Gothic Scottish National War Memorial Chapel, Castle Rock, Edinburgh (1922–7).

Bibliography

J. Curl (2002c);
Garden History (Journal of the Garden History Society, not to be confused with the Journal of Garden History ( JGH)), v/2 (1977), 30–34;
A. S. Gray (1985);
Germann and McW&W (1984);
Hussey (1931);
Jervis (1984);
Placzek (ed.) (1982);
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004);
RIBA Journal (Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects), ser. 3, xxxviii/8 (21 Feb. 1931), 239–49;
Savage (1980)