Profile for Frank Mears from Hand, Heart and Soul: The Arts and Crafts Movement in Scotland (page 1)

[close] Frank Charles Mears (1880 - 1953) was a Scottish architect and Scotland's leading planning consultant from the 1930s to the early 1950s.

He trained as an architect, initially with Hippolyte Blanc (1896 - 1901), and then with Robert Weir Schultz (1860 - 1951). In 1908 he became an assistant to the pioneer planner Patrick Geddes (1854 - 1932), working on a Survey of Edinburgh for the first Town Planning Exhibition in 1910.

In 1943, under the autonomous administration established by the wartime Secretary of State for Scotland, Tom Johnston, Mears was asked to prepare a regional plan for central and south-east Scotland, an area encompassing the entire catchments of the Rivers Forth and Tweed. His Regional Plan for Central and South-East Scotland was published in 1948.

In 1947, he prepared a report entitled Greenock: Portal of the Clyde for the Corporation of Greenock. In 1948, the Corporation commissioned a documentary film on Mears' planning work for the burgh. Greenock Plans Ahead was directed by Hamilton Tait and narrated by Frank Phillips.