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Percy Johnson-Marshall

British urban designer, regional planner and academic

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionFeb 19, 2026
Entity authorityQ7167427 ↗
Source-derived summary

Percy Edwin Alan Johnson-Marshall (20 January 1915 – 14 July 1993) was a British urban designer, regional planner and academic. Born in India, he was educated at Liverpool University, and worked initially with local authorities in the south of England. In 1959, he took a post as senior lecturer at the University of Edinburgh, and was appointed Professor of Urban Design and Regional Planning in 1964.

In 1962, he founded the planning consultancy Percy Johnson-Marshall & Associates, commissioned to masterplan the University of Edinburgh's Comprehensive Development Area in the 1960s. The practice involved urban planning and redevelopment in the UK and abroad. He is well known for being the main Architect of Celtic Park.

Early life and work

Johnson-Marshall was born in Ajmer, India, to English parents, and was raised in England from the 1920s. He attended the School of Architecture at the University of Liverpool, where his older brother, Stirrat Johnson-Marshall, was already studying. Tutors at Liverpool included Sir Patrick Abercrombie and Sir Charles Herbert Reilly. After graduating in 1936 he worked for Middlesex County Council, then for Willesden Borough Council, before moving to Coventry City Council in 1938, where he worked as Senior Assistant Architect under Chief Architect Donald Gibson, until called up for war service in 1941.

Editorial summary

“Percy Johnson-Marshall” enters the record as british urban designer, regional planner and academic. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Percy, Johnson-Marshall and British can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1915, 1993, 1959, 1964—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1915-01-20. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Percy, Johnson-Marshall and British.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Percy Johnson-Marshall” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Percy, Johnson-Marshall and British provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7167427. VIAF identifies the subject as 23648582. The Library of Congress control number is n87116441. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1915, 1993, 1959 and 1964.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
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Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Percy Johnson-Marshall”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Percy Johnson-Marshall primary sources, Percy Johnson-Marshall archive and Percy research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Percy Johnson-Marshall”?
  2. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
  3. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Percy Johnson-Marshall” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.