Sculptor, architect, designer and painter, born in London, the son of Edward Heffer, picture dealer and gilder. He studied at the Government School of Design at Somerset House between 1850 and 1852. In 1853 he entered the studio of the architectural sculptor John Thomas and worked on a number of his schemes, including the sculpture at the Crystal Palace, Sydenham; Somerleyton Hall, Suffolk; Preston Hall, Aylesford; the Fish Market Hotel and Railway Station, Lowestoft; and the new Palace of Westminster. He moved to Liverpool in 1857 to work for the architects Ward and Hay. The 1859 Roger Barnston Memorial at Farndon in Cheshire seems to have been one of his first commissions, and by 1862 he had established his own practice at 46 Church Street as ‘professor of drawing and painting, artist, designer and architectural draughtsman’. The Prince Albert Memorial Clock Tower at Hastings, East Sussex (1863, demolished in 1973) and his memorial to John Perris in Toxteth Park Cemetery, Liverpool (1876), were probably his most remarkable monuments, while St Bridgets, Wavertree, Liverpool, of 1868–72, a rare basilican church, was his most important architectural achievement. Between 1872 and 1879 he worked in Bebington, Wirral, on Joseph Mayer’s Free Library, on his Pennant House and on Mayer Hall. Heffer moved to London in 1876 after his Renaissance designs for a new Liverpool Cathedral had been condemned as pagan. In 1879 he recorded that over the course of about 25 years he had entered 56 architectural and sculptural competitions but had been successful in only three: ‘I entered the lists with more valour than discretion and reaped but few victories.’ He exhibited architectural drawings at the Royal Academy, 1862–85, and in 1889 presented three of his highly competent topographical watercolours to the Guildhall Art Gallery in London where they can still be found. In 1892 he moved to Norwich.
Bibliography: The Builder: (i) 19 November 1859, p. 760 (‘The Barnston Memorial, Cheshire’), (ii) 26 May 1916, p. 383 (obituary); R. Foster, ‘Philosophy and Patronage’, in M. Gibson and S.M. Wright (eds.), Joseph Mayer of Liverpool (Society of Antiquaries Occasional Papers, vol. 11), 1988, pp. 32–38; E. Heffer, ‘A Short Account of the Works of the late John Thomas’, Liverpool Architectural and Archaeological Society, vol. 14 (1861–62), pp. 111–20; V. Knight, The Works of Art of the Corporation of London, Cambridge, 1986, p. 137; E. Morris and E. Roberts, The Liverpool Academy and other Exhibitions of Contemporary Art in Liverpool 1774–1867, Liverpool, 1998, p. 302; E. Morris and E. Roberts, Public Sculpture of Cheshire and Merseyside, Liverpool, 2012, pp. 112–13; R. Pollard and N. Pevsner, Lancashire: Liverpool and the South West (The Buildings of England), New Haven and London, 2006, pp. 89, 474, 493; J. Seddon et al, Public Sculpture of Sussex, Liverpool, 2014, pp. 180–81.
Emma Roberts, 2012
