Francis Thompson (architect)

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Francis Thompson (1808)-(1895) was for many years architect for the North Midland Railway.

He was born in 1808 in Woodbridge Suffolk to a family of builders. He married Anna Maria Watson in 1830 and emigrated to Montreal in British North America (now Canada). After the death of his wife, and possibly because of the increasing political unrest, he returned to this country sometime around 1838.

Although at first sight young and inexperienced, he secured employment with the North Midland and designed many publicly acclaimed buildings, major and minor railway stations, and warehouses. One of the most representative of his surviving work is the Midland Hotel in Derby, but he also designed the Tri Junct Station and the railway workshops. He also assisted George Stephenson with the Britannia Bridge over the Menai Strait.