Florence Fulton Hobson. Architect

Florence Fulton Hobson (1881-1978) was one of the first three female architects to be licensed by the RIBA and the first women architect in Ireland. Her mother, Mary Ann Bulmer, was a women’s rights campaigner and her younger brother John Bulmer Hobson a well-known Irish nationalist.Fulton Hobson attended the School of Art in Belfast, was an apprentice in the Belfast practices of James John Phillips and James St John Phillips and worked for Edward Guy Dawber and James Glen Sivewright Gibson in London. After returning to Belfast, she worked for the Belfast Corporation from 1905 as an assistant to the Royal Commission on Health and Housing.Little is known of her activities for the Belfast Corporation and only two houses by her have been identified to date. She reflects, however, on the ways in which she negotiated her role as the only women in an all-male profession in several articles published around 1910. In her article “Architecture as a Profession” that was published in The Queen in 1911 she analyses and rejects arguments as to why a woman might encounter difficulties as a practicing architect, while at the same time explaining how architects are educated and accredited. In the context of the suffragette movement and the political situation in Ireland before the 1916 Easter Rising this paper discusses the ways in which Florence Fulton Hobson as the first female Irish architect who was licenced by the RIBA became an advocate for women to enter this profession and to overcome gender bias that threatened to relegate female architects to the realm of domestic architecture only.