Dictionary of Irish Architects 1720 - 1940

Land surveyor and engineer. William Stokes, who was born in 1793, was one of the twin sons of JOHN STOKES[1] JOHN STOKES[1] , engineer to the Grand Canal Company.(1) . He was employed by the Irish Boundary Survey from 1826 to 1828 and by the Shannon Commissioners from 1835 to 1839.(1) In the introduction his Pictorial Survey and Tourist's Guide to Lough Derg(London, 1842) he states that he had been engaged for some years in engineering and surveying work connected with the Shannon for the Board of Works, the Shannon Commissioners and the City of Dublin Steam Packet Company. A copy of this book in the National Library of Ireland was presented by Stokes to JOSEPH CONROY JOSEPH CONROY , with whom he had collaborated in the 1820s, and to whom, O'Dwyer suggests, he may possibly have been connected by marriage. Stokes also sought work from Grand Juries throughout the country. In the 1840s he was living in the neighbourhood of Cork. His son John married Louisa Crowe Wherland, a daughter of John Wherland, a civil engineer in Cork, in 1845. He may have returned to Dublin in the 1850s.(2) According to Saunder's Newsletter, Stoke's daughter, Helen, died suddenly at the age of twelve on the 13th April 1835, at which time the family was living in O'Briens Bridge.
Stokes's pupils and assistants included his son John Henry Fielding Stokes (1819-1872), John Annesley (1819-1904), and the architect BENJAMIN WOODWARD.& BENJAMIN WOODWARD.& #160; HENRY STOKES HENRY STOKES , who became county surveyor of Kerry, was his second cousin.

Plans by William Stokes for a road over Glenstall Mountain, Cos. Limerick and Tipperary (1833), and for another from Mitchelstown, Co. Cork, to Bruff, Co. Limerick (1835) and a plan for a new bridge over the Puckawn River (1833) are in the National Archives, OPW5HC/6.

Addresses:(4) 2 Circular Road, Camden Street, Dublin, 1818-1820; 20 French Street, 1821-1827; Banagher, 1835; O'Brien's Bridge, 1835-37; Banagher, 1838; Monkstown, Co. Cork, 1840; Blackrock, Co. ?Cork, 1842; 74 Baggot Streeet Upper, c.1854?

See WORKS.



References

All information in this entry not otherwise accounted for is from the account of Stokes in Frederick O'Dwyer, The Architecture of Deane and Woodward (1997), 37-41.  Further information about the Stokes family was kindly supplied by Teresa Stokes, great-great-granddaughter of Henry Stokes (Mar 2014). Information about the death of his daughter kindly supplied by Brian J Goggin, by email (January 2019).


(1) Brendan O'Donoghue, The Irish County Surveyors 1834-1944 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2007), 304, and Teresa Stokes.
(2) Sarah Bendell, ed., Dictionary of Land Surveyors and Local Map-Makers of Great Britain and Ireland 1530-1850 (2nd edition, 1997), II, 491.
(3) A 'W. Stokes, CE' made a survey of part of Donnybrook, Dublin, in 1854 (NA, Pembroke Estate papers, 2011/2/3/13), and a William Stokes, 74 Baggot Street Upper, is listed among the engineers and land surveyors in the classified directory section of the Post Office Dublin Directory for 1857 though not in the street directory section.
(3) From Wilson's Dublin Directory and O'Dwyer, op.cit.


1 work entries listed in chronological order for STOKES, WILLIAM [2]


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Building: CO. KILDARE, YEOMANSTOWN, BRIDGE
Date: 1835
Nature: Reconstruction.
Refs: Frederick O'Dwyer, The Architecture of Deane and Woodward (1997), 39