Walter Tapper

Sir Walter John Tapper KCVO FRIBA RA FSA (21 April 1861 – 21 September 1935) was an English architect known for his work in the Gothic Revival style and a number of church buildings. He worked with some leading ecclesiastical architects of his day and was President of the Royal Institute of British Architects. Tapper was appointed Surveyor of the Fabric of Westminster Abbey and acted as consulting architect to York Minster and Manchester Cathedral. On his death in 1935 his son Michael Tapper completed some of his works.

Walter Tapper was born in Bovey Tracey, Devon, in 1861, the son of George Tapper, a stonemason, later a builder. Little is known of his early life, but from the age of thirteen he served his articles at Rowell & Sons, an architects' practice in nearby Newton Abbot. He then moved to London and after a brief period working for Basil Champneys, joined Bodley & Garner, the firm of prominent Gothic Revival architects G. F. Bodley and Thomas Garner, working alongside another budding Gothic Revival architect, Ninian Comper. While working there Tapper began a romantic relationship with Catherine Lydia Jotcham, a showroom assistant at Watts & Co, a church furnishing company which had been founded by Bodley and Garner along with fellow Gothic revivalist George Gilbert Scott. In 1886, he married Catherine Jotcham; a few months later their first child was born. The couple had two children: a son, Michael John, in 1886 (who grew up to become an architect himself), and a daughter, Kathleen, who was born in 1889.

Faced with the responsibility of fatherhood in his mid-twenties, Tapper put off the financial risk of going into business on his own and remained with Bodley & Garner for eighteen years, rising to the role of manager. Throughout this time, he maintained a close business relationship with Watts & Co, procuring furnishings for church projects.

In 1900 Tapper started his own practice, beginning his independent work in Gray's Inn but later moving to St John's Wood, where he worked from his own home at 10 Melina Place.

In 1927–28 Tapper served as president of the Royal Institute of British Architects. His presidential address of 1927 was critical of modern consumerism and mass production, and Tapper cited the absence of a "national virtue of dignity" as detrimental to architectural greatness.

In 1928 Tapper was appointed Surveyor of the Fabric of Westminster Abbey. His work there included much restoration work and designing additions to the building, including a new gallery above the roof of the east cloister to connect the Abbey Library with the Muniment Room. Tapper was greatly occupied with the conservation of deteriorating stonework which had been damaged by pollution; the Henry VII Lady Chapel became a particular problem in 1932 when falling masonry forced its closure on grounds of safety. Tapper repaired and restored the chapel, and as part of the project designed a new altar for the chapel, based on the original altar which had been designed in 1517 by the Italian sculptor Pietro Torrigiano but was destroyed during the Restoration. Tapper's reconstruction included parts of Torrigiano's original which had been preserved in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and the original baldachino, framing a painting of the Madonna and Child by Bartolommeo Vivarini (c.1480).

Catherine died suddenly in 1932, and the grieving Walter, unable to remain in the family home without her, was given accommodation in Dean's Yard, next to Westminster Abbey. Tapper remained in his post at Westminster Abbey until his death in 1935. One month before he died, he was made a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order by King George V. Tapper's grave is in the west cloister of the Abbey and bears the inscription

WALTER JOHN TAPPER K.C.V.O., R.A. 1861–1935 SURVEYOR TO THE FABRIC 1928–1935