Architect, designer and writer. He was born in Yorkshire and moved to Cheshire in 1887. There he worked as a farmer’s boy, but learnt carving, first in a village class taught by the wife of the local parson, and then part-time at Manchester School of Art. In 1898 he gave up farm work in favour of teaching drawing and woodcarving in Cheshire schools. He also began to study, draw and photograph historic buildings, architectural details, wooden furnishings and monuments throughout Britain. His 12,000 negatives and slides are now shared by the Courtauld Institute and the National Monuments Record. He was the leading expert in the early twentieth century on medieval English architectural woodwork. His books include English Church Woodwork during the Medieval Period (1917); English Church Monuments 1150–1550 (1921); English Church Craftsmanship: an Introduction to the Work of the Medieval Period (1941); and Timber Building in England from early Times to the End of the Seventeenth Century (1951). He also wrote articles in the Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire and the Transactions of the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society, including, in the former title, two on church monuments (see ‘Bibliography’, below). His book, Cheshire (1949), is partly autobiographical and demonstrates his love for, and knowledge of, rural Cheshire, threatened, from his very conservative viewpoint, by nearly every modern development since the 1880s. He greatly admired the Perpendicular style as a particularly English contribution to medieval church architecture at a time when earlier periods were more fashionable among architects and historians. He was also notable as a craftsman and architect. He designed and restored church screens, roofs, reredoses and altars in Cheshire and beyond. His roof for Chester Cathedral refectory of 1939 is probably his greatest achievement. He designed the Chester War Memorial (1921–22) in collaboration with the architect, Thomas Rayson of Oxford.
Bibliography: F.H. Crossley, ‘Medieval Monumental Effigies Remaining in Cheshire’, Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, vol. 76 (1924), pp. 1–51; F.H. Crossley, ‘The Post-Reformation Effigies and Monuments of Cheshire (1550–1800)’, Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, vol. 91 (1939), pp. 1–123; Journal of the Chester and North Wales Architectural, Archaeological and Historic Society, 1956, vol. 43, pp. 50–51; E. Morris and E. Roberts, Public Sculpture of Cheshire and Merseyside, Liverpool, 2012, pp. xi–xii, xxvi–xxvii, 54, 87–90, 135; The Times, 28 January 1955, p. 10 (obituary).
Emma Roberts, 2012