George Fowler Jones
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George Fowler Jones (1818 - 1 March 1905), was a Scottish architect who was based for most of his working-life in York.
Jones was born in Aberdeen, and his earliest known surviving buildings are in the Scottish Highlands. These are:
- St Ninian's Church of England Church, Nairn (1844). In 1901-3, the church was relocated to Lochinver, and now serves a Church of Scotland congregation.
- The East Lodge at Kilravock Castle, near Nairn (1844)
- The West Lodge at Castle Grant, near Grantown-on-Spey (1845)
At around the same time, he designed the Scottish Baronial Castle Oliver in County Limerick, Ireland, at the behest of two sisters from the Oliver Gascoigne family, Elizabeth and Isabella. Work on the castle began in 1845. He also designed the 1844 Gothic almshouses at Aberford, Yorkshire, near the Gascoignes' English family seat of Parlington Hall.
In 1846, Jones relocated to York, perhaps in order to be nearer to Parlington, and started a practice at 8, Lendal.
He was responsible for a number of new churches and other buildings in the area, and various alterations to existing buildings. He mostly built in the Victorian Gothic style. Examples include St Mary, Garforth (1844-5), Fairfield Hospital in Bedfordshire (1856-60), Holy Trinity, Heworth (1868-9), the rebuilding of the West front of St Michael le Belfrey (1867) and the Lodge at the main entrance to the York Museum Gardens (1874).
Proposed by Decimus Burton, Sydney Smirke and Ewan Christian, Jones was elected a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1868. His elder son Gascoigne, named in honour of his patrons, also became an architect.
In addition to his architectural activities, Jones was a keen photographer. Many of his photographs of his own buildings and of York, the earliest dating back to 1851, are to be found in the City of York Libraries and Archives.
He died at home in Malton, North Yorkshire.
[edit] References
- Castle Oliver & the Oliver Gascoignes by Nicholas Browne
- RIBA archives.
- Linstrum, Derek (1978). West Yorkshire Architects and Architecture. London: Lund Humphries Publishers. ISBN 0-85331-410-1.
