Arthur Joseph Penty (17 March 1875 – 1937) was an English architect and writer on guild socialism and distributism. He was first a Fabian socialist, and follower of Victorian thinkers William Morris and John Ruskin. He is generally credited with the formulation of a Christian socialist form of the medieval guild, as an alternative basis for economic life. Penty was the elder of the two architect sons of Walter Green Penty of York, designer of the York Institute of Art, Science and Literature. While a pupil and assistant with his father, Penty absorbed the spirit of the Arts and Crafts Movement and the progressive movement in Glasgow. Early life Arthur Penty was born at 16 Elmwood Street, in the parish of St Lawrence, York, the second son of Walter Green Penty (1852–1902), architect, and his wife, Emma Seller. After attending St Peter's School in York he was apprenticed in 1888 to his father. Architect in York When, in the 1890s, Penty joined his father's architectural practice, now renamed as Penty & Penty, "a marked improvement in the quality and originality of the firm's work" ensued. Among surviving buildings by Walter and Arthur Penty are: 1894: The Bay Horse, a public house in Marygate. 1895-6: Rowntree Wharf on the River Foss, originally a flour warehouse for Leetham's Mill, which burnt down in 1931, now flats and offices. 1899: Terry Memorial almshouses in Skeldergate. 1900–02: Buildings in River Street, Colenso Street and Lower Darnborough Street in the Clementhorpe area south of the River Ouse. He attracted national and even international attention, including favourable notice in Herman Muthesius's Das englische Haus (1904). His younger brother, Frederick T. Penty (1879–1943) took over the business after their father died. Arthur's other younger brother, George Victor Penty (1885–1967), emigrated to Australia to pursue a career in the wool industry. Move to London Around 1900 Penty had met A. R. Orage; together with Holbrook Jackson they founded the Leeds Arts Club. Penty left his father's office in 1901, and moved to London in 1902 to pursue his interest in the arts and crafts movement. Orage and Jackson followed in 1905 and 1906; Penty in fact led the way, and Orage lodged with him in his first attempts to live by writing. There is a plaque on a house on the Thames riverside in Old Isleworth (near Syon Park) commemorating his residence there. Influence For a time, from