So Who Is Our Letter V?

  An A-Z of Architects of Loughborough

For a complete list of the A-Z posts please head over to the bloglist.

 

Short biography of Reginald Vaughan

Now, as far as I know, Reginald Vaughan was not born in Loughborough, didn’t die in Loughborough, and didn’t design anything in Loughborough. So why I am featuring him? Well, finding an architect whose name begins with a V, who has some connection to Loughborough has been difficult, so I find myself making a few connections instead.

Reginald was born in 1906, and every source I’ve read says little is known about his childhood, and despite doing loads of research, I can find nothing about him either! However, we do know that he studied architecture with the Architectural Association School of Architecture, which seems to be an independent place of education, created in 1847. Registered with the Royal Institute of British Architects  (RIBA) in 1927, in 1933, Reginald was elected as an associate of RIBA, and fellow in 1953.

In the early stages of his career, Reginald left the UK in 1928, to become architect to the Municipal Engineers’ Department, based in George Town, Penang, Straits Settlements, for three years. From 1933-1938 he was firstly chief assistant to Maxwell Fry, and later to Gropius and Fry. Following a period as an officer in the Second World War, in 1945 Reginald set up an architectural practice with Bronek Katz, a Polish architect, who was a graduate of the Technical University in Vienna, whom he had worked with whilst with Fry. In 1951 the pair designed the Homes and Gardens exhibition on the South Bank, at the Festival of Britain, as part of the “Downstream Circuit: The People”. I am fascinated by the Festival of Britain, and have tried to research Loughborough’s own involvement with this, in a previous blogpost.

The architectural practice of Katz and Vaughan were commissioned to design a clothes shop in Regent Street, London (Richards), and shops for the big shoe manufacturers, Freeman, Hardy, & Willis, Truform, and Bata. Given that these contracts didn’t come until the late 1940s-early 1950s, Katz and Vaughan cannot have been the architects behind Loughborough’s own branch of FHW. This is because the shoe shop was situated in the building which now houses Holland and Barrett, in the Market Place, next door to Caffe Nero, and it is a prime example of an Art Deco building – Crittall windows, pilasters, geometric shapes etc. - so likely to have been designed in the late 1920s-early 1930s. You can find out more about Art Deco from my A-Z blogging challenge 2025, or from my Art Deco Glossary.

 

____________________________________      

What follows is a selection of buildings designed by Katz and Vaughan

Note: this is a selective, not a comprehensive listing.

____________________________________

*Richards Clothes Shop, Regent Street, London

*Shops for Freeman, Hardy, and Willis

*Shops for shoe shop, Bata

*Shops for shoe shop Truform

*Homes and Gardens Pavillon, Festival of Britain (1951)

*Re-development of Lowdell family home (Baldwins), Felbridge

____________________________________

Basic facts

Name: Reginald Vaughan

Parents: Not known

Date and place of Birth: 1905

Spouse: Not known

Children: Not known

Death: 1971

Places lived: Boundary Road, London; Ritherdon Road, London

Place of work/Offices: 35 Welbeck Street, London; Norfolk Crescent, London; 17 Great Cumberland Place, London; Regent Street, London

____________________________________

I’m taking part in the April A-Z Blogging Challenge!

____________________________________

Posted by lynneaboutloughborough

With apologies for typos which are all mine!

_______________________________________________

Thank you for reading this blog.

Copyright:

The copyright © of all content on this blog rests with me, however, you are welcome to quote passages from any of my posts, with appropriate credit. The correct citation for this looks as follows:

Dyer, Lynne (2026). So Who Is Our Letter V? Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2026/04/so-who-is-our-letter-v.html  [Accessed 25 April 2026]

Take down policy:

I post no pictures that are not my own, unless I have express permission so to do. All text is my own, and not copied from any other information sources, printed or electronic, unless identified and credited as such. If you find I have posted something in contravention of these statements, or if there are photographs of you which you would prefer not to be here, please contact me at the address listed on the About Me page, and I will remove these.

External Links:

By including links to external sources I am not endorsing the websites, the authors, nor the information contained therein, and will not check back to update out-of-date links. Using these links to access external information is entirely the responsibility of the reader of the blog.

Blog archive and tags:

If you are viewing this blog in mobile format, you will not be able to easily access the blog archive, or the clickable links to various topics. These can be accessed if you scroll to the bottom of the page, and click 'View Web Version'. Alternatively, there is also a complete list of posts, which when clicked will take you to the page you are interested in.

Searching the blog:

You can search the blog using the dedicated search box that appears near the top of the blog when viewed in the web version. Alternatively, you can search using your usual search engine (e.g. Bing, Google, DuckDuckGo etc.) by following this example:

site: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/ “Radmoor House”

NOTE – the words you’re actually looking for must be in “” and the first of these must be preceded by a space

Thank you for reading this blog.

Lynne