George Wilkinson

George Wilkinson (whose portrait and photograph appear below) was born in the market town of Witney, situated in the county of Oxfordshire, south-central England. He was the eldest of six children and one of two sons born to parents William Anthony and Mary Wilkinson. His father was a carpenter and builder by trade, and both George and his brother William carried on their father’s legacy in construction. They became highly prolific architects in their own right, with each of them having played a major role in shaping the civic and institutional landscape of Victorian Great Britain and Ireland.

(Image Credit: York Museums Trust, Portrait of George Wilkinson)

Nothing is known about his life between 1814 and 1835, except that at some point he had trained to be an architect. After 1835 he became involved with the design and construction of the workhouses in Great Britain. It is debated which workhouse stood as his first. Some sources point towards the workhouse in his hometown of Witney, while others insist that the Thame Union Workhouse was his first after having won a competition to design the workhouse and oversee its construction in 1835. All we can say with certainty is that Witney Union Workhouse was built some time between 1835 and 1836, while Thame Union Workhouse was built in 1836.

Regardless, his career in the design of workhouses began in Great Britain, where he oversaw the construction of 34 workhouses. There were over 700 workhouses spread across England and Wales alone. The majority of his plans followed a square-shaped layout which was based on Sampson Kempthorne’s work, but there were a few exceptions that took inspiration from St. Andrew’s Cross or had non-standard designs. The workhouses he designed in Great Britain are as follows:

Following the introduction of the Irish Poor Law Act 1838, having been impressed by Wilkinson’s work on the workhouses of Great Britain, the Poor Law Commissioners invited him to Ireland to design and oversee the construction of 130 workhouses. 28 of the 130 workhouses were to be built in the six counties that would eventually become Northern Ireland, while the other 102 would be built in what would become the Republic of Ireland.

Cork Union Workhouse is often cited as the first workhouse in Ireland that Wilkinson completed. The main reason for this is because after the Cork Poor Law Union was established, paupers were accepted into the old House of Industry, which had been adapted by Wilkinson to accept paupers by the 15^th of February 1840, then receiving its first paupers on the 1^st of March 1840. The next two workhouses that had been adapted from existing buildings were the workhouses in Dublin North and Dublin South, having been declared fit for the reception of paupers on the 25^th of March 1840. However, which purpose-built workhouse came first is not up for debate. Cork Union Workhouse was built in 1840-1841 and declared fit for the admission of Irish paupers on the 23^rd of December 1841, receiving Irish paupers shortly thereafter. Londonderry Union Workhouse had been built between 1839-1840 and accepted its first paupers on the same day it was declared fit for purpose, the 10^th of November 1840. So, while Cork workhouse has by and large been accepted as the first of Wilkinson’s Irish workhouses, Londonderry has a clear claim as Ireland’s first purpose-built workhouse.

The vast majority of Wilkinson’s Irish workhouses were modified versions of his typical plans for the English and Welsh workhouses, which followed Sampson Kempthorne’s square block design. Instead of one square block that accommodated inmates on a square plot, the Irish workhouses were three separate blocks that sat on an elongated rectangular plot, usually with a dining hall and chapel connecting the accommodation blocks. This is highlighted below in his designs for the Mallow Union Workhouse.

(Image Credits: Irish Architectural Archive and UCD Digital Library)

In 1845, Wilkinson published his book, Practical Geology and Ancient Architecture of Ireland. Therein, Wilkinson explored the composition of local rock types, their effects on architectural design, and evaluated the longevity of historical structures based on the underlying rock types.

After the potato blight hit Ireland in 1845, in 1848 Wilkinson was commissioned to design and oversee the construction of an additional 31 workhouses in Ireland. The final number of additional workhouses to be built rose to 33, bringing the final total of workhouses in Ireland to over 160. The exact number is a matter of debate, e.g., should you count workhouses that were built to replace adapted buildings?

It is widely accepted that there were 163 Irish workhouses, but there’s an argument for 165. The buildings that became Clonmel, Cork, Dublin North, and Dublin South workhouses existed prior to the introduction of the Poor Law Act, then were later adapted to fit their purpose. Later both Clonmel and Cork had purpose-built workhouses, with operations ceasing in the adapted buildings. Can the adaptation of the Houses of Industry in Clonmel and Cork Poor Law Union be seen as separate from their purpose-built workhouses? What’s more important? Administrative function or material reality? If we include the temporary buildings erected on the sites of the workhouses, things get really messy and the number of workhouses rises further: architects still debate the matter. However, the general consensus is that there were 163 Irish workhouses, so we’ll leave that debate for the architects.

On the 18^th of December 1850, Wilkinson married a woman from his own hometown of Witney, Mary Clinch. She was the daughter of brewer, banker, and landowner, John Williams Clinch. They had four children together, daughters Alice, Florence, Annie Elizabeth, and Edith. He continued working for the Irish Poor Law Commission up until September 1855, when the commissioners decided to close down their architectural office. Shortly thereafter, Wilkinson retired, garnering a pension of £300 a year.

With his work on the Irish workhouses completed, Wilkinson didn’t return home to England but remained in Ireland. He established a private practice in Dublin, originally at 49 Westland Row and later at 180 Great Brunswick Street (now Pearse Street), while maintaining a private residence in the coastal suburb of Killiney, Co. Dublin. He was privately commissioned numerous times, with his works including 21 train stations throughout Ireland, such as Multyfarnham station, Co. Westmeath (1851); Italianate station, Crossdoney, Co. Cavan (1855); Harcourt Street station, Co. Dublin (1859); the redesigns and alterations of Broadstone and Westland Row stations, Co. Dublin (1861); and Cavan town terminus (1862). In 1857, he designed the central staircase of Westport House, Co. Mayo, then in 1880 he rebuilt Guinness’s main offices on James’s Street and designed the new exhibition hall for the Royal Dublin Society (RDS). From 1860 up until 1886, he served as architect to the Commissioners of Asylums for the Lunatic Poor, having designed both Castlebar District Lunatic Asylum and Letterkenny District Lunatic Asylum.

Wilkinson’s work garnered him much recognition from professional and academic societies, such as the Royal Irish Academy in 1840, the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland in 1849, the Institution of Civil Engineers of Ireland (1849–1853), and the Geological Society of Ireland (1880). On the 16^th of December 1878, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects. Around 1888, he returned to England with his wife Mary, having retired from his career as an architect. Two short years later, on the 4^th of October 1890, George Wilkinson died at Ryde House, Twickenham, Middlesex, England.

(Image Disclaimer: The featured image for this post is an AI-generated artistic interpretation of architectural tools from the 1880s, created using Google Gemini. This image is for illustrative purposes only, and any resemblance to depictions of real or fictitious architectural designs is purely coincidental.)