Over the last couple of years, Sidmouth Museum has been painstakingly indexing items from the museum copies of the Sidmouth Herald and Sidmouth Observer. Follow the link to see the extent of Sampson’s involvement in buildings in Sidmouth.
Many thanks to Sidmouth Museum.
Sampson designed two separate war memorials - one to record the fallen (the town memorial in the churchyard) and the other to assist servicemen returning from the front (the War Memorial Club, now renamed the 1922 Club).
Left: Sampson’s sketch of the Music Room. The pen and ink drawing was displayed at the Royal Academy of Arts annual exhibition of 1899 and published in the Academy Architecture Review of that year.
An exhibition of the work of Robert William Sampson was held at Kennaway House, Sidmouth, in 2009. The exhibition raised considerable interest in Sampson’s immense contribution to the built form of Sidmouth, and ultimately led to the birth of the Sampson Society.
A glass inkwell was amongst Mr Sampson’s personal effects on display at the exhibition. The heavy glass inkwell had a silver lid, which was inscribed with the words “To R W Sampson, Architect of the Cotlands Music Room, from Mr and Mrs Kennet-Were, 4th December 1899”.
Over the years Sampson designed hundreds of houses in Sidmouth, but which of his houses did he actually live in?