Born in Castleford, Yorkshire, the son of a Wesleyan minister, he trained with a firm of architects at Leeds before setting up on his own.  He was a successful architect before he retired to take up painting, unsurprisingly he was particularly attracted by interesting buildings and old bridges, the design of Wesleyan chapels being one of his specialities.  In 1935, after retirement and determined to learn to paint, he and his wife Hilda travelled through several Mediterranean countries.  

In 1939 they settled in Carbis Bay, Pennington studying at Leonard John FULLER's St Ives School of Painting. He put on exhibitions in St Ives in the following years, featuring Sicily and the fruits of a five month sketching tour of Southern Spain and Morocco. His oils, particularly of St Ives street scenes, show the influence of John Anthony PARK. Before the Second World War, he was a member of the Newlyn Society of Artists and a candidate for their hanging committee afterwards.  On the death of his wife in 1957 he moved to Chichester, joining local societies but still exhibiting with STISA until 1959.