Born in Preston, his family's relatively humble circumstances - his father was a railway clerk[2] - forced him to start work at the age of fourteen.
Grenfell-Baines left a secure, but limiting, job in the Lancashire County Architect's Office to work for the prestigious private firm of Bradshaw Gass & Hope in Bolton in 1930.
[4] Grenfell-Baines's work for the Air Ministry during World War II brought him to the attention of Anthony Chitty and the London Modernists.
His highly successful firm BDP (Building Design Partnership), which he set up in Preston in 1961,[6] was the result of numerous experiments in management structure.
National Life Stories conducted an oral history interview (C467/46) with George Grenfell-Baines in 2000 for its Architects Lives' collection held by the British Library.