Architect
Thomas Harrison was the leading architect of Chester. Read about his life and work.
The entrance to the court building at the Chester Castle Complex
Relaxing in the sloping gardens of The Architect pub, watching the sun go down across The Roodee, you are a stone’s throw from a cluster of the finest creations of Georgian architect Thomas Harrison. He also designed the elegant house (St Martin’s Lodge) behind you as his home in his later years.
Harrison began life in Richmond, Yorkshire. Sir Lawrence Dundas, the wealthiest landowner in the area, spotted his talent and paid for him to study architecture in Rome, the artistic capital of Europe.
In Rome, Harrison was surrounded by awe-inspiring classical architecture: not just the surviving buildings of the Romans, but also the work of leading Italian architects Bramante, Michelangelo, and Bernini. Harrison was particularly struck by the 98-foot Trajan’s Column –not so much for how it told the story of Rome’s victory in the Dacian wars through its astonishing helical frieze – but as an engineering feat of stone on stone.
In Rome at the time an argument was raging about which was the true fountainhead of Western civilisation. Was it the Romans (as people had believed for centuries), or was it the Greeks? In the Greek camp, the German Winckelmann; in the Roman camp the Italian engraver Piranesi (drawer of imaginary prisons) who Harrison met. Winckelmann won the argument, leading to the Greek revival in architecture, and the view that has persisted to this day that when it comes to art, the Ancient Greeks trump the Romans.
At 32, Harrison returned to England, living in London, hoping to get noticed by exhibiting his drawings at the Royal Academy. But it wasn’t a good time to get work as an architect in London because Britain was at war with the American colonies and building work in the capital had pretty much stopped.
Harrison’s first big break at the age of 38 was to design the five-arch Skerton Bridge in Lancaster, replacing the medieval bridge. Harrison lived in Lancaster for several years and designed many fine buildings there, most significantly the rebuilding of Lancaster castle.
Harrison first got involved with Chester in 1785 when he won a competition to design a new county gaol at Chester Castle. Over the next 30 years he designed much of what stands today around the Castle complex – the Shire Hall, the barracks, and the huge gateway. Architectural guru Nikolaus Pevsner said, “What he has achieved here is one of the most powerful monuments of the Greek revival in the whole of England”. Walking around today it has a grandeur that contrasts with the more intimate feel of the rest of the city.
When he first started designing buildings in Chester, Harrison was living in Lancaster and the 80-mile commute would have been very tiring. In 1795 the Chester JPs encouraged him to move to Chester permanently. At the time Chester was a bigger, more vibrant city than Lancaster but Chester didn’t have a practising architect. He must have liked it here because he made it his home for the rest of his productive life.
Harrison’s career was bookended by big stone bridges. His first was the Skerton Bridge in Lancaster, and his last was the Grosvenor Bridge in Chester. In 1824 the Chester magistrates applied successfully via an Act of Parliament to build the Grosvenor Bridge and thereby forge a new road link from the city centre out to the south-west towards Wrexham. This was to be the first new road since Roman and medieval times.
The Grosvenor Bridge from the Roodee side of the river.
Harrison’s design was bold: a single stone arch spanning 200ft and 64ft tall, big enough to accommodate the ships then being built in Chester. Harrison knew that this was the biggest stone arch in the world, and indeed it held the world record until 1864. Harrison retired from the job at the age of 81 and died before he saw it completed. It was opened by Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld and her daughter, Princess Alexandrina Victoria of Kent (later Queen Victoria).
While Harrison was living in Chester, he was commissioned to design several of the finest buildings in the Northwest including the Liverpool Lyceum, Manchester’s Portico Library, and the Hawkstone Citadel in Shropshire. Harrison never rubbed shoulders with royalty or designed anything for London. But his work stands among the finest of his era: London’s loss is Chester’s gain.
This essay was inspired mainly by the book Thomas Harrison: Georgian Architect of Lancaster and Chester by John Champness.