SLADDIN, Frederick Robert Edwin

Surveyor and Architect

Was born in London; he trained and received a fellowship with the Surveyor's Institute, London and served articles with Young & Brown, Surveyors in London from 1898 until 1903 and was chief clerk to the firm until 1905. He arrived in Cape Town in 1905 and joined his brother TA SLADDIN, already established as an architect in practice, (cf MILNE & SLADDIN) remaining from 1905 until 1910. 1905 to 1906 he was employed on a salary and commission basis, becoming a full partner in 1906. The brothers do not appear to have formed a partnership under their own names (i.e. Sladdin & Sladdin) (cf. TA Sladdin.) TA Sladdin left the partnership in 1910 on his departure for Salisbury (Harare), Rhodesia (Zimbabwe); FRE Sladdin took over the office in Cape Town. From March 1910 he was sole partner of Milne & Sladdin; the style of the firm seems to have been continued. In October 1910 he was elected an associate member of the Cape Institute of Architects; he also read a paper before the Cape Town and Rondebosch Society, a 'Note on the Livery Guilds of London', in 1910. In January 1911 he was appointed consulting architect to the Bank of Africa and applied for Licentiate membership of the RIBA. The architect John Parker noted in signing the papers, 'he has no draughtsman or other assistant in his office'. He was accepted as a Licentiate in 1912 and was elected a Fellow of the Cape Institute of Architects in April 1913. He died at the Rondebosch and Mowbray Cottage Hospital two years later and was buried at Woltemade No 1 Cemetery in Cape Town; at the time of his death he was serving on the Council of the Cape Institute of Architects 'where his shrewd common-sense and uniform courtesy secured the respect of the governing body' (RIBA Jnl 1914-15:192, 215). He had married in 1907 and after his death his wife and child returned to England.

FSI; LRIBA Cape Town 1912. (LRIBA nom papers (1912); RIBA Jnl 1914-15:192, 215 obit by AH REID)

All truncated references not fully cited in 'References' are those of Joanna Walker's original text and cited in full in the 'Bibliography' entry of the Lexicon.

List of projects

With photographs
With notes

National Bank: 1913 11. Cradock, Eastern Cape - Architect

National Bank: 1914 02. Fouriesburg, Free State - Architect

Books citing SLADDIN

Brodie, Antonia (Editor). 1993. Directory of British Architects, 1834-1914: Vol. 2 (L-Z). London: Mansell. pp 626

Brown, SM. 1969. Architects and others: an annotated list of people of South African interest appearing in the RIBA Journal 1880-1925. Johannesburg: Unpublished dissertation, University of the Witwatersrand. pp

Dunston, Lola & Dunston, Tom. 1975. Young Pretoria 1889-1913. Pretoria: Dunston. pp 40

Johnson, Brian Andrew. 1987. Domestic architecture at the Cape, 1892-1912 : Herbert Baker, his associates and his contemporaries. Cape Town: Unpublished Thesis UNISA. pp 392