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due to poor health, come down from Pietermaritzburg where he held the
rank of captain, and was Chief Censor in the German Prisoner-of-war
International Camp. His demise in health (he died of cancer of the throat

as a result of heavy pipe-smoking), together with the death of his wife,
Anna, left him spiritless and it was a sad ending to a man who at one time
was one of Cape Town’s outstanding architects.

Elsworth, Lancelot Andrew - 1891 - 1971 FRIBA (1945)

Lance Elsworth, a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects
(1945), was the son of John and Kate Elsworth. His father was a Mechanical
Engineer who went to Alexandria Egypt in 1889 to set up the Egyptian
Salt and Soda Works at Gabbari on the Medi-
terranean Sea, near Alexandria. Lance was one
of nine children, seven of whom were born in
Alexandria. He was born on 11 February 1891.
He was educated at Bridlington Grammar
School, East York and at the Leeds School of

Architecture. He was articled to Percy Robinson
and Jones in Leeds England in September
1908. He travelled Europe extensively and
studied at the Royal Academy Architectural
School, London and in 1914 assisted Sir Edwin
Lutyens’s ofce on the New Delhi drawings. It
was here that he met Charles Walgate. Elsworth

Lance Elsworth - 1920 saw active service in the Great War as a gunner
of the Honourable Artillery Company, where he was
appointed as a captain and became an adjutant with
the Tenth Yorkshire and Lancashire Regiment. He was twice mentioned in
dispatches.

Elsworth arrived in Cape Town on 4 November 1919 accompanied by
his wife, Alma, whom he had married in London on 4 November 1914. He
joined the practice of Kendall and Morris, but his stay there appears to be
short-lived. Percy Walgate, who had arrived in Cape Town in 1920, had
set up his own practice in early 1921 and requested Elsworth to handle
any work that the practice received while he (Walgate) was involved with
the design of the UCT Campus in association with architects Hawke and
McKinlay. One of Walgate’s rst contracts at St. James was the design of a
home for Alfred Babbs in Mentone Road. The plans, which were completed
on 2 July 1921, were most likely done by Elsworth in accordance with his
agreement with Walgate. The plans were, however, signed by Walgate. In