My partner, Paul Gross, who has died aged 86, was a musician, artist, architect and occasional activist. He was part of the Rakes band, formed in 1956 with his friends Reg Hall and Michael Plunkett. They played a mixture of Irish, Scottish and English traditional music, each bringing their own family experience of music-making as well as exploring the traditional Irish music scene in London, which in the 1950s was little known beyond its participants.
Paul (fiddle), Michael (fiddle and flute) and Reg (melodeon) were soon part of the Irish pub session scene, becoming friends and collaborators with such great musicians as Michael Gorman, Margaret Barry and Jimmy Power. Paul was much influenced by Power’s fiddle playing; all the music was in the oral tradition, transmitted at pubs such as the Bedford, Camden Town and the Favourite, near Hornsey Road.
The Rakes continued playing together for barn dances and festivals all over the UK for 60 years, including a collaboration with Bob Davenport, the traditional singer from Gateshead. Afterwards Paul continued playing at sessions, where other musicians particularly valued his driving musical style but also his modest personality and tremendous sense of humour.
Born in Greenwich, London, to Robert, who worked for the Medina Oil company in Deptford, and Jess (nee Simmons), Paul lived in the borough for most of his life. He showed an early interest and talent for music, first playing with school friends from St Joseph’s academy, now St Matthew academy, after school.
His professional career was as an architect. Trained at the Bartlett School of Architecture at University College London, he worked in a variety of architectural practices. One of his early jobs, in the 1960s, was on a mid-Victorian gothic style bank in Oxford, now the Ivy restaurant, where his likeness appears as one of the carved heads on the extension. Later work included shopping centres and the design of living quarters on oil rigs.
Until retirement in 2003, Paul worked with his old friend Marc Zambelli at Zambelli Friend on remodelling Belgravia townhouses, designing a Scottish baronial style hunting lodge and luxurious country houses. In the 1970s, he used his architectural expertise as part of the South East London Squatters Movement, organised by activists such as Ron Bailey, which worked on making empty houses habitable for families.
He is survived by his children, Rachel and James, from his marriage to Christine Bolam, which ended in divorce, and his sister, Jean.