John Beswicke (1847–1925) was an architect who practiced in Melbourne between the 1870s and 1915. A prolific and successful designer, he is known to have designed some 300 buildings, including 203 houses, 9 banks, 14 churches, 44 commercial buildings, 11 hotels, 15 institutional buildings such as hospitals, 45 shops and 6 large town halls. History John Beswicke was the son of Charles Beswicke and Elizabeth Keys, who had both arrived in the Port Phillip district in the 1840s. In 1847 Charles married Elizabeth when he was aged 40 and Elizabeth was 18. They had 3 daughters and 2 sons, John being their second son. John went to Geelong Grammar School and in 1862 was apprenticed to the firm Crouch & Wilson at age 16, where he continued to work for 18 years, finishing as head assistant. While there he worked on such prominent projects as the Deaf School and Blind Institute, both built in the 1860s on St Kilda Road, the main building for MLC in Hawthorn in 1882, and numerous churches, as well as some of his own projects. The practice of Crouch & Wilson passed to the sons of the principals in 1881, when Crouch retired, and Ralph Wilson left to join with Bewicke to create Wilson & Beswicke on 2 January 1882, until Wilson's death in 1889. After this he was often in sole practice as J. Beswicke, but also in other partnerships including Beswicke & Hutchins (1889–90), and Beswicke & Coote (1890–93). Amongst his prolific output was a series of grand houses in Harcourt Street in Hawthorn, many for his family, from the 1870s to 1900; of 15 buildings built in this area, 14 are still standing. His father Charles had bought land in Harcourt Street in 1873 and moved from Geelong into a house at No 5, which John designed while he was still at Crouch & Wilson (‘Les Avents’, later ‘Carn Brae’, altered in the 1920s). John Beswicke's own residence ‘Rotha’ at No 29 was built in 1887, and in 1900 he built the even grander ‘Talana’ on the corner of Auburn Road for his wife, but she preferred to stay at ‘Rotha’. Beswicke was associated as a consulting designer with a number of property and building companies in the Boom period of the 1880s. One of these was the Australian Property and Investment Co; he had designed houses and subdivisions for one of