Dictionary of Irish Architects 1720 - 1940

County surveyor for the South Riding of Co. Tipperary, 1860- 1889. John Leslie Worrall, the son of William Worrall, a solicitor in Limerick, and his wife Elizabeth, was born in Limerick in 1817 and christened in St Mary's Cathedral on 21 June. He entered Trinity College, Dublin, on 6 November 1837, when he was twenty(1) but left after two years to become apprenticed to a land surveyor.   He assisted JOHN BENJAMIN MACNEILL  JOHN BENJAMIN MACNEILL on railway projects, including the Dublin & Drogheda line, for nearly five years and in 1843 worked for WILLIAM& WILLIAM& nbsp;RICHARD LEFANU  RICHARD LEFANU on preliminary surveys for the Dublin to Cork line of the Great Southern & Western railway.   From 1846 onwards he practised privately in Limerick.  During the 1850s he was one of the draughtsmen who drew views for inclusion in the rentals of properties to be sold according to the provisions of the Incumbered Estates Act of 1849.(2) By August 1860, when he was eventually appointed county surveyor for the South Riding of Co. Tipperary - nine years after successfully sitting the county surveyorship examinations - he was, according to the Dublin Builder, 'favourably known to the profession and the public'.(3) He held the position until his retirement on health grounds in July1889 and died six months later on 26 January 1890. He was succeeded by EDWARD AUGUSTUS HACKETT EDWARD AUGUSTUS HACKETT . His wife, Annastatia (née Bradshaw), whom he had married in 1846 at St Michael's church, Limerick, died just under two years later and was buried with him in Mount Jerome Cemetery, Dublin.

Addresses: 8 Cecil Street, Limerick, 1854;(4) Stream Vale, Clonmel, at time of death.

See WORKS.



References

Information in this entry not otherwise referenced is from Brendan O'Donoghue, The Irish County Surveyors 1834-1944 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2007), 330-331, which gives the fullest account of Worrall's career, from www.familysearch.org (2008) and from Worrall's gravestone in Mount Jerome Cemetery, Dublin (B.O'D.).


(1)
Alumni Dublinenses, 895.
(2)
The lithographs from his views of various properties in Cos. Clare and Limerick are repr. in Mary Cecilia Lyons, Illustrated Incumbered Estates Ireland, 1850-1905 (1993), 47-48,118-122. 
(3)
DB 2, 1 Aug 1860; the appointment is also noted in B 18, 25 Aug 1860, 551. 
(4)
Lyons, loc. cit., above, and Slater's Directory (1856).


2 work entries listed in chronological order for WORRALL, JOHN LESLIE


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Building: CO. TIPPERARY, CLONMEL, RICHMOND STREET, MILITIA BARRACKS
Date: 1868
Nature: New barracks for S. Tipperary Artillery on site of old county gaol. 3-storey frontage, 246 x 27 ft. Stores and extensive parade ground to rear.  FS laid 5 Nov 1868 by Col. Purefoy. Contractor: Carruthers & Armstrong. Estimated cost: £4,000.
Refs: IB 10, 15 Sep,Nov 1868, 233,287;  exterior illus. in Seán O'Donnell, Clonmel 1840-1900: anatomy of an Irish town (1999), between pp. 118 and 119.

Building: CO. TIPPERARY, CARRICK-ON-SUIR, DILLON BRIDGE
Date: 1880
Nature: New 3-span bridge replacing mediaeval bridge) from E end of town to Carrickbeg with lattice girder top and masonry piers. Estimated cost about £13,000. 'R.G.[sic]. Worrall, esq., CE, County Surveyor, Tipperary' resident engineer, Robert Manning consulting engineer. Contractor: William J. Doherty.
Refs: IB 22, 1 Jan 1880, 4;  George Henry Bassett, The Book of Co. Tipperary (1889), 177.