Identity area
Type of entity
Person
Authorized form of name
Sophia Gray
Parallel form(s) of name
- Sophy Gray
Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
Other form(s) of name
Identifiers for corporate bodies
Description area
Dates of existence
5 January 1814 – 27 April 1871
History
Places
Legal status
Functions, occupations and activities
Sophia Gray is often cited as South Africa's first woman architect. But her architectural endeavours had started much earlier in her ancestral home in England.
Having arrived in the Cape province in 1947, she and her husband Robert Gray, who was the first Bishop of the Anglican Church in Southern Africa, settled in Protea, later called Bishopscourt. From there Sophy Gray undertook long and strainous trips, often on horseback, around the Cape up to KwaZulu Natal. She always carried her portfolio, sketching all the way. By 1861 she was managing 21 building projects in various parishes, with her favourite project being St Saviours in Claremont.
Even when her health began to deteriorate, she insisted on keeping up with her work as architect, estate manager, accountant and secretary to the Bishop. She died in 1871 and was buried in the church yard of St Saviours.
(Text from the article "Architectural greats: Sophy Gray", by Matthew Barac, published in the magazine "Elle Decoration", July 2005.)