Feilden was born in Meadway Court, Hampstead Garden Suburb, London on 20 February 1917.

He spent his early years in British Columbia, western Canada, as his father had ill health from being gassed in the First World War.

In 1935 he worked for a year at British Thomson-Houston at Rugby (later to be the first home of Power Jets).

From 1939 to 1940 he worked for Unilever at Port Sunlight, arriving in September 1939, the very start of World War Two.

From 1959 to 1961 he worked for the gas turbine division of Hawker Siddeley (then the leading UK company in diesel engines and marine power).

[2] In 1963 he published his Report of the Feilden Committee on Engineering Design, commissioned by the Minister of Science.

His son (Richard, born in 1950, and also educated at King's College, Cambridge) became an architect, and was part of the Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios practice since 1975.

He died eight months after his father,[3] in an unfortunate accident when a tree fell on him as he was creating a memorial glade to Feilden.