Jackson, Thomas

Jackson, Thomas (1807–90). Accomplished Irish architect. He was in partnership with Thomas Duff of Newry, Co. Down, with whom he designed the Old Museum, College Square North, Belfast (1830–1), an essay in the Greek-Revival style. He settled in Belfast where he laid out an estate of Grecian villas on the Cliftonville Road, Belfast (1831–2), and designed several fine Neo-Classical houses, including Graymount (1835), the pair of villas at Mount Charles (1842), and Clonard House (1843). He was probably responsible for 4–30 University Square, but his masterpiece is the charming Tudor Gothic RC Church of St Malachy (1840–4), with its fine plaster fan-vault. He designed a series of ambitious Italianate villas, including Glenmachan Tower (1860s), Altona (1864), and Craigavon (1870), all in Belfast. He took his son, Anthony T. Jackson (d. 1910) into practice as Thomas Jackson & Son, and together they designed the first purpose-made insurance-offices in Belfast in the form of a Venetian palazzo at 10 Victoria Street (1863) as well as the round-arched former Town Hall, Victoria Street (1869–71).

Bibliography

Brett (1967, 1996);
Dixon (1978);
Larmour (1987);
McClenaghan (1983)
P:JRSUA, iii/2 (Nov/Dec 1994)57–9