Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/263

 R.A. After establishing with Wallace & Cottier, two fellow architects, a decorating and furnishing business in Langham Place, Brydon returned to architectural practice, and in 1883-4 was engaged in building St. Peter's Hospital, Henrietta Street, Covent Garden. In 1885 he won the competition for the Chelsea vestry hall and subsequently built (1889) the neighbouring free library and the South-West London Polytechnic. Brydon was frequently successful in competitions, securing in 1891 the commission to build the municipal buildings at Bath (opened 1895), an important engagement followed by the erection of the Technical Schools (1895-6), the Victoria Art Gallery and Library (opened 1901), and the pump room extensions, all in the same city. The last undertaking, obtained in competition (1894), involved the covering-in of the scholae of the Roman bath [see, Suppl. II]. In 1889 Brydon carried out the New Hospital for Women in the Euston Road, London, and in 1896 the London School of Medicine for Women in Handel Street, W.C. (1897-9). Other of his works were the village hall, Forest Row, Sussex (1892) (which after destruction by fire he rebuilt); the private residences, Lewins in Kent for Joseph Robinson, Bournemead at Bushey, and Pickhurst, Surrey; residential chambers for ladies in Chenies Street, W.C.; and for J. J. Tissot, the French artist, a studio and certain alterations at the Château de Buillon.

Brydon was selected in 1898 from a limited number of first-rate architects as the designer of the offices in Whitehall for the local government board and the education department. His style for domestic and hospital work had been generally of a Georgian type of English renaissance, but in the designs at Bath he had shown a command of orthodox classicism. Brydon, before designing the great buildings now entrusted to him, paid a special visit to Italy. His design was worthy of its important site and purpose, but he died before the work was finished, leaving the completion of the buildings in the hands of the office of works. He became a fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1881, a vice-president in 1899 and 1901, and served for several years on its council. Brydon died at his residence 31 Steele's Road, Havers tock Hill, on 25 May 1901, and was buried in Highgate Cemetery.

 BUCHAN, ALEXANDER (1829–1907), meteorologist, born at Kinnesswood, Kinross-shire, on 11 April 1829, was the youngest of four children of Alexander Buchan, weaver, by his wife Margaret Kay Hill. At an early age he took a practical interest in field botany. Educated at the Free Church Training College, Edinburgh, he passed to the University of Edinburgh, where he graduated M.A. in 1848. He was schoolmaster or 'public teacher' at Banchory and Blackford, and subsequently became headmaster of the Free Church School at Dunblane. At Christmas 1860, owing to an affection of the throat which hampered his school work, he abandoned the teaching profession and was appointed secretary of the Scottish Meteorological Society, which had been founded in 1855 through the instrumentality of Dr. James Stark, head of the statistical department of the office of the Scottish registrar-general. Buchan devoted his life to the work of this office and to meteorological research or discussion. The mainstay of the society, he superintended a network of stations with a view to the compilation of meteorological statistics for the registrar-general for Scotland. To such duties was added the supervision of the weather journals of the lighthouses of the Board of Northern Lights, and of a separate series of rainfall stations. Except the lighthouses the Scottish stations were maintained by voluntary observers, generally noblemen and country gentlemen, to whom Buchan periodically paid visits of inspection. Under Buchan's direction the society inaugurated an observatory at the summit of Ben Nevis, which was in active operation from November 1883 till its abandonment for lack of funds in September 1904. In 1887 Buchan was appointed by the Royal Society of London a member of the meteorological council, which from 1877 to 1905 administered the parliamentary grant for meteorology and directed the operations of the meteorological office in London.

From 1878 to 1906 he was librarian and curator of the museum of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and thus came into constant relations with the chief Scottish men of science. He was secretary of the Royal Society Club, a social coterie of the fellows. Thomas Stevenson [q. v.], the lighthouse engineer, who was Buchan's colleague at the Meteorological Society as honorary secretary in 1871, became an intimate associate, while Stevenson's son, 