As a designer, he often included "his distinctive signature characteristics, such as
canals, weirs, bridges, viewing platforms and associated planting by Jellicoe's wife, Susan," as at the
Hemel Hempstead water gardens he designed for this
new town in the late 1950s.[3] The
garden canal he designed in the 1970s for the
Royal Horticultural Society's gardens at
RHS Wisley to display
waterlilies was later renamed the "Jellicoe Canal" as a memorial.[4]
Life
Jellicoe was born in
Chelsea, London, the younger son of Florence Waterson (née Waylett) and her husband George Edward Jellicoe, a publisher's manager, and later publisher.[2] He trained as an architect at the
Architectural Association in London in 1919 and won a
British Prix de Rome for Architecture in 1923, which enabled him to research his first book Italian Gardens of the Renaissance with John C. Shepherd. This pioneering study did much to re-awaken interest in this great period of landscape design, and through its copious photographic illustrations publicized the then perilously decayed condition of many of the gardens. He later became principal of the Architectural Association from 1938 to 1942.[5]
Jellicoe taught at the
University of Greenwich from 1979 to 1989. He came as a lecturer and visiting critic, usually on six occasions a year.[6]
On 11 July 1936, he married
Susan Pares (1907–1986), the daughter of Margaret Ellis (Daisy), née Dixon (1879–1964) and
Sir Bernard Pares (1867–1949), the historian and academic known for his work on Russia.[2]
National Life Stories conducted an oral history interview (C467/6) with Geoffrey Jellicoe in 1996 for its Architects Lives' collection, held by the
British Library.[7]
Design projects
Note: All locations below are in England unless stated otherwise.
^"Kennedy Family Coming For Memorial Inauguration". The Times (56316). London: 6. 8 May 1965. Mr Geoffrey Jellicoe, the architect for the site, said...that the point of the memorial was the landscape rather than any physical monument