Thomas Harrison (architect) - Appraisal

Appraisal

That Harrison was a fine innovative designer of bridges is evidenced by the continuing successful use by modern heavy traffic on Skerton and Grosvenor Bridges, and on St Mary's Bridge in Derby. As an architect, the editors of the Cheshire volume of the Buildings of England series describe him as "one of the most important of Cheshire's architects". Harrison's first biographer, Arthur Blomfield, said he was "almost, if not quite, the first architectural genius in the kingdom".

Although most of his designs were in Neoclassical style, he also created buildings in Gothic style, for example at Lancaster Castle, and Hardwick Grange. Nevertheless, he is considered to be one of the main influences in the Greek Revival of architecture in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The architectural historian Giles Worsley describes him as "the first English architect to grasp the full potential of the Greek Revival", and David Watkin says he is the "finest" of the architects who revived the forms of Greek architecture. Of the Shire Hall in Chester Castle, Worsley says it is "the first serious monument of the Greek Revival". Writing about Harrison's designs at Chester Castle, Pevsner says "What he has achieved here is one of the most powerful monuments of the Greek Revival in the whole of England".

Harrison spent the whole of his career in the northwest of England and, other than his houses in Scotland and his work in Oxford, his works were confined to Lancashire, Cheshire, Shropshire, Cumbria, Derbyshire, and North Wales. He was never a member of the Royal Academy or any other London-based institution, and only a rare visitor to London once his practice was established. Nevertheless, Charles Cockerell (later to become the president of the Royal Institute of British Architects) said of him in 1828 that he was "undoubtedly the noblest genius in architecture we have had".