Career
In 1886 or 1887 he took a job as an architect"s apprentice in Birmingham, where he worked for the King"s Norton and Northfield Sanitary Authority. His earliest recorded private commissions were in the King"s Norton area and date from 1889, and in 1890 he was elected to the Birmingham Architectural Association. In 1898 de Lacy Aherne was commissioned to build a series of houses by his father-in-law, whose local contacts in the Moseley area were helpful to the rising young architect, whose work quickly became fashionable among the rapidly growing and wealthy professional middle class of the area.
From 1903 onwards he designed a large number of speculative houses in high-status Moseley roads such as Russell Road, Salisbury Road, Amesbury Road, Reddings Road and Oxford Road, financed either himself or in conjunction with local building firms.
Several of these houses, including 9 Street Agnes Road and 110 and 112 Oxford Road are now listed buildings.