Thomas Garner

Thomas Garner
Born	1839 Wasperton Hill, Warwickshire
Died	30 April 1906 Fritwell Manor, Oxfordshire (buried Downside Abbey)
Occupation	Architect
Practice	Bodley and Garner
Buildings	Downside Abbey choir
Projects	Watts & Co.

Thomas Garner (1839–1906) was one of the leading English Gothic revival architects of the Victorian era. He is known for his almost 30-year partnership with architect George Frederick Bodley.

Born at Wasperton Hill Farm in Warwickshire, Thomas Garner grew up in a rural setting that gave him an instinctive feeling for country crafts and construction, which were never weakened by long years spent in London.

Thomas Garner was articled to the architect Sir Gilbert Scott at the age of 17. One of his immediate predecessors at "Scott's" was George Frederick Bodley, who was already beginning to establish his own reputation. A warm friendship developed between two. When he returned to Warwickshire, Garner undertook various small works as a representative of Scott, including the repair of the old chapel of the Lord Leycester Hospital at Warwick, which he buttressed into security.

Garner married Rose Emily Smith on 6 October 1866. In 1868 he returned to London to help his friend Bodley, and they established the long and fruitful partnership at their office at 7 Gray's Inn Square.

At first, their collaboration was close and produced such homogeneous work that there was little external evidence of dual authorship. What is noticeable in some of the earlier buildings by the "firm" is the replacement of the French influences which previously had shown themselves in Bodley's work, by a distinctively English style. This period of close collaboration produced the Church of Saint John the Baptist at Tuebrook, Liverpool, soon followed and eclipsed by the Holy Angels at Hoar Cross, Staffordshire, and St. Augustine's Church, Pendlebury, near Manchester – the former begun in 1871, the latter in 1873. They also designed St David's Cathedral, Hobart, in Tasmania.

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