Thomas James Mottram was born in Liverpool, UK, in 1939 and attended Kingston College of Technology, London, where he gained a Diploma in Architecture. In September 1963 he joined the six-month, postgraduate ‘General Course’ run by the Architectural Association’s Department of Tropical Studies, in London. Two of his student projects, ‘Khartoum Town Hall’ (with AA classmate Manuel Camisuli) and 'High Density, Middle Income Housing For Central Bombay’ (with Marc Lasserre and Manuel Camisuli), were published in the AA Journal of June 1964. He appears to have returned to Liverpool in the late 1960s but is also recorded as having been a Rome Scholar, so may have spent time at the British School at Rome, during this early period. Alongside his architecture, Tom Mottram was a talented cricketer, playing for Liverpool Cricket Club from 1968-69 and joining Lancashire, then Hampshire 2nd XI, before his first-class debut, against the Australian touring team of 1972. At six foot 4 inches (and nicknamed ‘the pink panther’), Mottram was a capable of producing bounce and seam and was a vital part of the Hampshire County Championship winning team of 1973, taking 57 wickets at an average of just 22. He continued to play one-day cricket and was again part of Hampshire’s John Player League winning team of 1975. He retired from professional cricket in 1977 and returned to his architectural career, moving south to Dorset where he lived and practiced in the Poole area. In his later years he was a trustee of Headway a charity providing care and rehabilitation services, across Dorset, for adults with traumatic brain injury.
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