The Blower family are recorded in Shrewsbury, Shropshire over several centuries from around the early 1500s, largely members of the property owning merchant classes who held local power through the city's independent institutions in contrast to the gentry, who held political power from their landholdings in the countryside and exercised the highest political offices of the county and nation, such as sheriff and knight of the shire (MP).
John had nine children – Michael's father Frank in the middle – with his wife Catherine Bromley, kin of the Corbets, families that were amongst the most powerful landed gentry of the county from the time of the Norman Conquest through to the 19th century political emancipation that so transformed the nation.
Frank was a horseman and fought in the Great War as a Captain of the Royal Horse Artillery, seeing action on the Western Front, in North Africa and the Middle East.
After the War, he remained in Belgium and settled in Brussels, where he was part of a vanguard rebuilding horse racing in the country and where he met his wife, Kathleen 'Kitty' (Tree) Waring.
In 1939 and as a British citizen by birth, Michael fled Belgium with his family before the advance of the German Army and left on the last civilian boat to leave the country as war began.
The conference was attended by such luminaries as Walter Gropius, Fernand Léger, Josep Lluís Sert and Le Corbusier, who gave the delegates a private tour of the soon to be completed Unité d'habitation in Marseille.
After the AA and as a fluent French speaker, he was selected to act as project architect for the British Pavilions at Brussels World Expo 1958,[1] working with designers Felix Samuely, Howard Lobb, Edward Mills,[2] Sir Hugh Casson and James Gardner.
[4] Just prior to Roderick's death, they were working on a project at Combe Court, which was completed by his sons Damien & Robert, through their architectural practice, Stedman Blower.
John Clenshaw (1928–2018) was a lifelong employee of Michael, first joining the practice as a young apprentice in 1947 when both Arthur and Leonard Stedman were working in partnership.
He was influential in arguing for the preservation of the Farnham Pottery, the last working bottle kiln in England, the Brightwells Gardens and the Redgrave Theatre in the town centre.
Robert Blower (b 1960), BA DipArch RIBA studied architecture and urban design at the Universities of Greenwich, Westminster, Kingston and The South Bank, all in London.