Baker, Herbert (1862–1946)

English architect, born at Cobham, Kent. In 1892 he went to South Africa, and after the Boer War designed many important buildings there. Later he was associated with Edwin Lutyens in the planning of the new capital at Delhi in India, and after World War I he designed the war memorials at Neuve-Chapelle and Delville Wood (the latter on the Somme), in northern France, and, in England, the Winchester College war memorial.

His work in South Africa included Groote Schuur, redesigned for Cecil Rhodes; the administrative buildings for the South African government at Pretoria; the cathedrals of Cape Town, Pretoria, and Harare, Zimbabwe; the railway stations at Pretoria and Johannesburg; and the Rhodes Memorial on Table Mountain. In New Delhi he designed the secretariat and the legislative buildings (1912). In London, his buildings include the reconstruction of the Bank of England (1921), India House (1925–9) and South Africa House (1930).

He was knighted in 1926.