Magee College, Derry – designed by Edward P. Gribbon of Dublin
Edward P. Gribbon, Architect, Surveyor, Mentor!
In an early chapter of my book, Gribbin: A Family History of Ulster, I spend some time on the Gribbins of Dublin. In 1901, there were nineteen Gribbins recorded by the census as living in Dublin. Griffith’s Valuation records only three for 1854. One of them is Edward P. Gribbon, who had a house in Gardiner Street during the 1850s. He was a successful architect who designed Magee College in Derry (see image above), the Presbyterian Church on Ormond Quay, Dublin, and a number of other important buildings. The Dublin Builder said of Magee College that it was “a highly meritorious Gothic composition, from the design of Mr Gribbon, architect; indeed it may not be too much to say that this building cannot be excelled in point of architectural beauty, externally, by any of its class in Ireland.” Edward had offices at different times on Ormond Quay, in D’Olier Street and in Harcourt Street, and it looks as if, later in life, he was living in Rathfarnham, a leafy suburb of south Dublin. In the 1860s he seems to have put architecture behind him and concentrated on the more lucrative occupation of surveying; he was the Government Quantity Surveyor to the War Department.
The Gribbon family from Coleraine, County Londonderry.
The evidence suggests that all the Dublin Gribbins can be traced back to Ulster and I am fairly sure that Edward was a member of the Gribbon family from Coleraine. One clue is that he very definitely spells his name with the “-on” ending and was a Protestant. Another is the commission to design Magee, in the same county as Coleraine. Finally, we know that he was born in Ireland, but trained in London and there were few Gribbin families around in the 1840s who could afford send a son to London, but the Coleraine Gribbons very likely could, as they were well-established textile manufacturers.
Henry – an architect son, two sisters and Saratoga!
Edward had at least one son, Henry Edward, who seems to have gone into business with his father, working in the Harcourt Street office during the 1880s. Edward died in 1899, so he doesn’t appear in the 1901 census, but Henry does and it appears that he was married and had four sons and a daughter. They lived on Moyne Road, Rathgar. There were two sisters called Gribbon who also lived in Rathgar and I suspect they were Henry’s sisters and that they lived off an annuity from Edward P. Although the sisters were still in situ for the 1911 census, Henry and his family had departed. They do not turn up in the UK censuses, so it looks like they must have emigrated to America, for I found one of the sons, Cecil Norman Gribbon, online; he turns up on the MyHeritage website which shows that he married Katharine Madalaine Putnam from Saratoga Springs and died in 1940 in New York.
Linen Handkerchiefs International …
In my chapter on Londonderry I deal with the Gribbins of Coleraine in detail, showing how they built a thriving business in linen, with offices in Dublin, Belfast, Glasgow, Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, London and New York. They specialized in their latter years in handkerchiefs and fancy linen, but the business died in the 1960s when the linen industry generally collapsed in these islands.
W.J. Barre – an architect of genius.
One interesting point to finish: Edward P. Gribbon had a young pupil in his office during the 1840s by the name of W.J. Barre, a lad from Newry. Barre went on to outshine his master, becoming surely the second most prolific architect in Belfast during the Victorian period after Charles Lanyon. Lanyon had the advantage over the younger Barre, since he was also the County Antrim Surveyor, as well as Lord Mayor and a Conservative MP for Belfast, positions which must have given him an edge in the acquisition of commissions. However, Barre famously got one over on his rival when he won the competition to design the Albert Clock; Lanyon used his influence to have the commission withdrawn, but the people of Belfast were so outraged at this injustice, and made their outrage known, that Barre’s design was finally accepted. The Newryman went on to design the Ulster Hall and the Provincial Bank of Ireland (pictured below), as well as a number of other very distinctive buildings and has been described as “an architect of genius.” Unfortunately, he died at the age of only thirty-seven; who knows but that, if he had survived, he might have gone on to put Lanyon in the shade!
