George Thomas Hine

Who was George Thomas Hine?

George Thomas Hine was an English architect.

Son of Thomas Chambers Hine of Nottingham, with whom he was in partnership up to 1891. Hine specialized in asylum architecture, and his paper to the RIBA in 1901 still provides a valuable review of asylum design and planning. In 1887, after winning the competition for the enormous new LCC asylum at Claybury, Essex, he established his practise in London. This was strengthened by his experience as Consulting Architect to the Commissioners in Lunacy - a post which he held from 1897, succeeding Charles Henry Howell. He was a frequent entrant for asylum competitions, winning his first, for Nottingham Asylum, in 1875. During the 1880s and 1890s he entered ten asylum competitions - winning five - and was assessor for four others. He designed and saw completed four major LCC asylums housing over 2000 patients each, and his prolific output included new county asylums for Hertfordshire, Lincolnshire, Hampshire, Surrey, East Sussex and Worcestershire, as well as extensive additions to many others. His concentration on this one building type reflected his own perception of asylum architecture as an "almost distinct profession in itself".