Dictionary of Irish Architects 1720 - 1940

Engineer, active from the 1840s until the 1890s. Arthur Irwin Mahon, was born at Cavetown House, Co. Roscommon in 1826.(1) He attended a five-year course at the Putney College of Civil Engineering from 1840 to 1845. This was followed by two years of railway work under Sir JOHN MACNEILL  JOHN MACNEILL from 1845 to 1847. From 1847 to 1850 he was resident engineer under GEORGE WILLOUGHBY HEMANS  GEORGE WILLOUGHBY HEMANS at Moyvalley on the Midland Great Western Railway. During the 1850s he was attached to the Survey and Valuation Office in Dublin.(2) At some stage he also worked under ROBERT MALLET[2] ROBERT MALLET[2] , and JOHN BOWER  JOHN BOWER and was engaged on the Leeds waterworks.

In 1876 Mahon was appointed engineer to Pembroke Township, Dublin, in succession to JOHN LONGFIELD [2] JOHN LONGFIELD [2] . He held the post until his retirement in 1896 on reaching the age of sixty-five. It appears, however, that he must have been de facto township engineer from about 1871, as the Township Commissioners resolved to grant him a pension of £200 per annum, representing two thirds of his salary, because he had served for twenty-five years.(3) JOHN HARRISON MIDDLETON  JOHN HARRISON MIDDLETON was appointed his successor in 1898.

After his retirement, Mahon moved appears to have moved to England.  He is recorded as living at Chelmondiston, near Ipswich, Suffolk, in the 1901 English census and as dying in the Ipswich area on 2 March 1903.(4)

ICEI: elected member, 25 April 1894;(5) no longer a member by 1898.

Address: 4 Vergemount, Clonskeagh, Dublin, <=1883->=1896;(6)  Chelmondiston, Suffolk, 1901.



References

All information in this entry not otherwise accounted for is from ICEI membership applications, III, 11.

(1) Gillian Webster, 'The Cavetown Mahons of County Roscommon', The Irish Genealogist, vol. 9, no.3 (1996) pp. 381-389 (information from Mark Thomas, Oxford, England, Feb 2012).
(2) Anglo-Celt, 12 Apr 1855; see also list of nobility, gentry, merchants, and traders in Post Office Dublin Directory for 1853 and 1857.
(3) IB 38, 1 May 1896, 102.
(4) Information from Mark Thomas, as above.
(5) TICEI 23 (1893-94), ?.
(6) Thom's Directory (1883); Post Office Dublin Directory (1896).