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Sir Thomas Graham, Bart Jackson

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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"SIR THOMAS GRAHAM JACKSON, Bart. (1835-), English architect, was born in London Dec. 21 1835, the son of a solicitor. After a brilliant career at Oxford, where he became a fellow of Wadham, he entered the office of Sir George Gilbert Scott at the age of 23, and remained there for three years, but his future work showed that he was not very deeply influenced by the somewhat narrowly Gothic method and predilection of Scott. To accommodate himself to the calls upon his sense of propriety in design, one who was later to be asked to add additional building work to many of the Oxford colleges - (Brasenose, Lincoln, Balliol and others, and especially the University Examination Schools) - needed that wide range of knowledge of the architecture of the late 16th and 17th centuries that is indicated in much of Jackson's work. Upon Oxford he has left an especial impress with which his name will be always associated. For Cambridge, again, he carried out many important university buildings, the Law library and school, the Archaeological museum, and the Physiological laboratories amongst them. Less bound there than at Oxford to the precedent of an existing design his work, mostly of a late English Renaissance character, shows facility and invention. His new buildings and additions at so many great English schools - including Eton, Harrow, Rugby and Westminster - formed a very large proportion of his artistic output in the 'eighties and 'nineties. The interior of the chapel at Giggleswick school, Yorks., is an example of that treatment of colour - in marble and mosaic - upon which he relied so much as a complement to his architectural design. He was always keen on bringing together the various arts as tributary to, or allied with, architecture, and in support of this endeavour was a member, and in 1896 master, of the Art Workers' Guild. Jackson's name will also be connected with a large number of new churches for which he was responsible, and of even more in the restoration of which he was concerned, amongst the latter being St. Mary's, Oxford. Though subjected at the time to much criti cism as to the decorative features of the exterior, and especially the spire, Jackson's work still holds its own as dealing conscientiously and conservatively with the difficult and disputed problem of restoration. He carried out many new houses, and a large number of alterations and additions to others. As an author he was responsible for several works, covering a wide area of his profession, and, in especial, his many visits to the Nearer East, especially to the Balkan States, have resulted in his giving nearly all of what is known as to the architecture of Ragusa, Dalmatia, Istria and the Adriatic coast. He was so far recognized as the authority on their traditional type of Romanesque building that the Dalmatians sought his help in the building of the Campanile at Zara. In 1910 the Royal Institute of British Architects awarded him their gold medal. He was elected A.R.A. in 1892, and R.A. in 1896, became hon. D.C.L. of Oxford, and hon.

LL.D. of Cambridge, and was created a baronet in 1913.