Eve Happold is a Londoner who trained as a nurse at St. George's Hospital, Hyde Park Corner, (now the Lanesborough hotel). She has general nursing, midwifery and nurse tutor qualifications and the Diploma in Nursing from the University of London. In the 1980s she was awarded an M.Sc. in Public Policy Studies by the University of Bath.
In 1967, she married Ted Happold, then at Arups, where he ran the prestigious Structures III group. Ted was a human dynamo with boundless energy and charisma. He never compartmentalised his life: professional life, family life, friendships and travel all merged into one another from the outset. It was exhilerating, exhausting, endlessly stimulating and fun - she was, or tried to be, the steadying hand !
In 1976,Ted and Eve, with their sons, Matthew and Tom, moved to Bath from the bohemian enclave of Gloucester Crescent NW1. Ted took up an appointment as Professor of Building Engineering at the University of Bath and, with other emigres from Structures III, (the founding Partners), set up Buro Happold.
Ted's web of friends and contacts then spread via engineering practice and the professional institutions into academia. Constantly in the train or on the tarmac, travel was both a joy and a way of life. In 1974, Eve had gone with Ted to Riyadh and Jeddah for business meetings.
In Jeddah, the two of them embarked on a fascinating, thrilling and sometimes hair-raising car journey from Jeddah to the UK by way of Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Turkey. Matthew and Tom travelled with them whenever possible - an early trip into China via Hong Kong was memorable. As was the six week Presidential tour taken en famille when Ted was President of the Institution of Structural Engineers. This journey took them from Calgary by train over the Rockies to Vancouver, to Singapore via Japan and then to Pakistan and Northern India. The ultimate family trip was to Buckingham Palace in 1992, when Ted received his knighthood for services to engineering and architecture.
In 1995, true to his Quaker principles, Ted set up the Happold Trust, using a pecentage of his profit share to do so. Tragically, Ted died shortly afterwards in January 1996. Later that year, in order to continue the Happold connection and underwrite the Happold principles, Eve was invited to become a Trustee. She has served in that capacity since then.