MIchael Morrison

Everything you could possibly want to know about Michael Morrison - May 2003.

Hopefully these few biographical details will help to flesh out the rather tedious CV which you will be sent as well!
I was born in Hertford on 12th July 1948. Having a son on the 12th July was the only thing that my father ever did that won any approval from his Irish relations – which probably tells you all you need to know about my family antecedents. My father, Sam Morrison, was at the time deputy County Architect at Hertford, which was very much at the forefront of architecture in the immediate post-war period. When I was one year old the family moved to Derbyshire, where my father started his own practice and where I spent my childhood. He was a successful architect and the practice he started still flourishes today – he was, however, somewhat erratic in his business dealings and the family’s fortunes fluctuated wildly – at its grandest big houses, big cars and chauffeurs; at its most mundane living in the small flat behind my Grandmother’s house.
I have one younger sister and a much younger brother. As I was sent away to prep school aged eight I never really got to know either of them. The prep school, Foremark Hall in Derbyshire, was probably pretty typical for the 1950’s. I don’t remember being particularly unhappy – the things that stick in my mind are the cold, the foul food, being allowed to run wild in the woods and the rather splendid 1750’s Palladian house. My first practical example of the effect of inappropriate work on historic buildings was the retribution that followed the removal of some lead from the gutters with a penknife. There was a “craze” for carving ones initials in lead – a craze that came to an abrupt and painful end after the first serious rainstorm.
I haven’t thought much about prep school for years, however, when stuck in the blizzard at Cape Royds with little or nothing to do we enlivened the time with some potted life histories. The New Zealanders were fascinated by the “Fuss” system operated by prep school – essentially you got half a “Fuss” if you asked for a small helping and a full “Fuss” if you left anything on your plate; five “Fusses” and you got beaten and started again. Given that Saturday breakfast was always prunes followed by fishcakes I was regularly beaten each Saturday after lunch. So taken was Nigel Watson, the Director of the Antarctic Heritage Trust, with this system that, for the remainder of our stay in Antarctica, he awarded “Fusses” to all and sundry at every opportunity.
After prep school I went on to Repton, where I had a relatively undistinguished career, narrowly avoiding being expelled when caught in a compromising situation with the (very pretty) daughter of the village baker. The main crime, it appeared, was endangering the school bread supply. I scraped together enough ‘A’ levels to get in to Bristol to read architecture. I had intended to become a vet but was put off by my Housemaster who said that he was not at all certain that it was possible to be a vet and a gentleman. My memories of Repton are few and far between but generally happy ones – I have, however, felt no compunction to go back there since I left.
Bristol University was enormous fun. The course itself was, with the benefit of hindsight, pretty lousy, concentrating on the technical aspects of architecture and ignoring completely either history or aesthetics. One emerged after six years able to calculate the size of a waste pipe depending on the probability of the number of lavatories being flushed at once or to work out the size of a concrete beam – but with no idea at all of why some things look and feel good and others don’t! In the 1960’s Clifton was still a run down area with lots of student accommodation at, what seems by today’s standards, ridiculously cheap prices. Living in the splendid Georgian terraces for four years was a wonderful experience for a budding architect and was more influential on me that the actual teaching.
I met Catherine, my wife, in Bristol, where she was reading French and English. We were married in 1973, shortly after I qualified, and decided that we didn’t want to stay in London where we were both working. This was very much the period where five acres and a cow seemed to be the only hopeful way forwards and so we moved up to Norfolk. This was on the basis of a chance conversation with a friend who said that a firm of architects in Norwich, “Purcell Miller and Tritton”, were looking for an architect with an interest in historic buildings. We moved to Norfolk with no intention of staying for more than a year of two, but, like so many people, got stuck. The main reason in my case being the sudden and sad death of the senior partner Donovan Purcell some four months after I joined the firm. All at once I had a huge amount of work pitched into my lap, all of it on historic buildings, about which I knew virtually nothing at the time.
Since then my life has been a model of stability, the exact reverse of my fathers. We have lived in the same house in a village some 14 miles west of Norwich, for the whole time. Periodically we decide we ought to move but have so far managed to avoid it by building a series of new extensions. The only real downside to living in Norfolk is the need for early starts. Fortunately I have never minded getting up and so starting at 4.30 in the morning for London or Liverpool is a regular feature of life. I do an enormous mileage each year but given the choice would rather drive 200 miles home than stay away in a hotel.
Catherine worked for five years as a social worker before stopping to have our family. We have three children. Harry now aged 25 and working in London after reading History at Oxford. Rachel aged 23 who has delighted her parents by deciding, after four years of Chemistry at Oxford, that what she really wants to do is to conserve paintings – she starts at the Courtauld in the autumn. Isabel aged 19, who is currently teaching in a school in Kenya before going to Cambridge to read English in October.
My interests are largely work, work and more work. I have always enjoyed carpentry – despite being thrown out of the workshop at school and made to do Greek instead (a misunderstanding with a lathe and a chuck key). I have, painfully slowly, built myself a canoe and a Norfolk Punt. Sailing was very much a family activity when the children were small – every weekend in the summer – and ensured that summer holidays were always cold, wet and in the UK. Since they have all grown up my resolve has weakened and I have joined my wife in the dangerous business of riding horses which has provided some excellent family holidays over the last few years.

Michael Morrison
06 April 2003.