One of the themes I look at in my book ‘Building Passions’ is about the personal and working relationships between those who designed and built Victorian structures.
The key family relationship was between fathers and sons: Isambard Kingdom Brunel and his younger son aHenry Marc Brunel, and Sir Charles Barry and his sons Charles Barry junior, Edward Middleton Barry and Sir John Wolfe Barry. As you can see in the below partial family trees, there were also earlier and later generations of the families involved in (civil) engineering and architecture.
But the relationship of most interest was probably the one between Sir John Wolfe Barry and Henry Marc Brunel, to the right of the above diagram. They first met on the 1860s design and construction of a new station and railway route into Charing Cross, London, both under the supervision of Sir John Hawkshaw, leading Victorian civil engineer. They lived and worked together as bachelors in Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s former home and offices in central London - that is until John Wolfe got himself married, and as his new family expanded Henry Marc was eventually pushed out!
The project that gained them shared respect despite the immense shadows of their deceased fathers, was the completion of London’s now iconic Tower Bridge in 1894 (see below image). It is described fully in the book. Their business partnership would become world famous and endured as a civil engineering consultancy well into the 20th century.
There are individuals mentioned in the book who, like John Hawkshaw, were neither Brunel nor Barry family members, but worked closely with them as part of a building relationship:
Sir Horace Jones, City of London architect, without whom Tower Bridge would never have existed as a concept
Sir William Arrol, supplier of the structural steel for Tower Bridge (and the Forth Bridge in Scotland)
Sir George Armstrong, who provided the technology for Tower Bridge’s huge opening and closing bascule leaves
Sir William Froude, a leading Victorian mathematician and hydraulic engineer, as well as mentor to Henry Marc Brunel
Augustus Pugin, who provided the gothic flair for Sir Charles Barry’s New Palace of Westminster
John Lewis Wolfe, architect-confidant of Sir Charles Barry, with a taste for a plainer Italianate style
Perhaps some of these gentlemen will feature in future posts.