Sculptor born in Chester, the eldest son of the sculptor Edward Griffith (1841–1919). He was educated at King’s School, Chester, and presumably trained as a sculptor under his father. He established his first workshop in Chester, but by around 1892 had set up in Liverpool, firstly at 89 Paradise Street, then at 75–77 Kitchen Street, and later at 23 Bevington Hill. Throughout these years his family home was in Rock Ferry on the Wirral Peninsula, his final address being 154 Bebington Road. He exhibited at the Walker Art Gallery five times between 1888 and 1912, showing, on his first appearance, two history subjects, The Wounded Roman and Boadicia, but thereafter concentrating on portrait busts and architectural sculpture, most of his commissions being in the latter category. In the 1880s and ’90s he carried out a number of public commissions in Wales: a statue of Daniel Rowland, for Bryn Mair, Llangeitho, Ceredigion, erected in 1883; in the same year, the sculpture for John Douglas’s Joseph Peers Memorial Clock Tower in Ruthin, Denbighshire; in 1889–90, the Gladstone Memorial Fountain, in Hawarden, Flintshire – which Griffith designed as well as carved, having won the commission in a public competition; and in 1895 the sculpture for Grayson & Ould’s Prince Llewelyn Fountain in Conwy. The building boom in Liverpool around the turn of the twentieth century provided Griffith with many architectural carving contracts, including with Grayson & Ould for their Leyland & Bullins Bank, 36 Castle Street (completed 1895); with Henry Tanner for his General Post Office, Victoria Street (1899); with Briggs, Wolstenholme & Thornely for the Bluecoat School, Wavertree (1906); and with Matear & Simon for the New Cotton Exchange Buildings, Old Hall Street (1906; figure sculpture by William Birnie Rhind). In c.1906 he was engaged by James Lomax-Simpson to execute the sculpture for St George’s United Reform Church (which he had designed for Lord Leverhulme) at Thornton Hough, Merseyside; in preparation for the commission, the architect took Griffith on a sketching tour of Romanesque buildings in France. Other ecclesiastical commissions completed by Griffith include carving the rood screen designed by George Hastwell Grayson for St Paul’s, Old Chester Road, Tranmere (1910), and all the architectural sculpture on Huon Matear’s Holy Trinity, Southport (1912). At the close of the First World War, Griffith carved a frieze of the allied countries’ shields on the Cunard Building, Pier Head, and in the ensuing years provided sculpture for a number of war memorials, including those at Neston (1920) and Nantwich (1920–21) in Cheshire; Syston in Leicestershire (1921); St Bees in Cumbria (1923); and Wigan (1925) and Preston (1925–26; figure sculpture by Henry Pegram) in Lancashire.
Ancestry website sources: England censuses 1881, 1911, 1921; Electoral Registers for 1900–1901, 1907–1908, 1908–1909, etc; England and Wales, Civil Registration Death Index, 1931 (Q4).
Bibliography: T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Liverpool, Liverpool, 1997, pp. 123–24, 238, 239, 330; T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Leicestershire and Rutland, Liverpool, 2000, pp. 278–79; D.A. Cross, Public Sculpture of Lancashire and Cumbria, Liverpool, 2017, pp. 102–03; C. Hartwell et al, Cheshire (The Buildings of England), New Haven and London, (2011), 2024, pp. 161, 404, 632; Liverpool and Chester street directories; Liverpool Mercury, 5 January 1897; Mapping Sculpture; E. Morris and E. Roberts, Public Sculpture of Cheshire and Merseyside, Liverpool, 2012, pp. 85, 141; R. Pollard and N. Pevsner, Lancashire: Liverpool and the South-West (The Buildings of England), New Haven and London, (2006), 2022, pp. 332, 340; Porcupine, Liverpool, 6 July 1912; T. Wyke, Public Sculpture of Greater Manchester, Liverpool, 2004, pp. 424–25.
Terry Cavanagh, December 2025
