Architectural sculptor born in Liverpool. His father was the painter Richard Norbury (1815–1886) and his younger brother the painter and illustrator, Edwin Arthur Norbury (1849–1918). By the date of the 1861 census, Alfred was still living with his parents at 8 Myrtle Street, Mount Pleasant, Liverpool, his occupation recorded as ‘Apprentice Carver and Sculptor’. His exhibited work – at the Liverpool Institution of Fine Arts in 1864 and in the Liverpool Autumn Exhibitions between 1873 and 1894 – consisted primarily of portrait busts. In 1867–71 he executed all the external and internal carving on Culshaw & Sumners’ Christ Church, Linnet Lane, Liverpool; in 1873–74, the stone figures of Caractacus, Julius Caesar, Alfred the Great and Edward the Confessor on the clock tower of Maxwell, Tuke & Co’s Cambridge Hall, Southport; and in 1871–75, the carving of the Ark, pulpit and Bimah (reading platform) in W. & G. Audsley’s Synagogue in Princes Road, Liverpool (he also carved the Ark and Bimah in the same architects’ New West End Synagogue in London, 1877–79). By 1876, he had gone into partnership with Robert Upton and Alexander Paterson as Norbury, Upton & Paterson; in that year the firm completed the contract for the architectural sculpture on J.E. Reeve’s offices and stores for the brewer, Peter Walker, at 64 Duke Street, Liverpool. In 1880, they opened new premises, St Luke’s Art Workshops, in Myrtle Street. Designed by the architect Henry Sumners (formerly of the Culshaw and Sumners partnership), it was equipped with showrooms, offices, workshops and a mason’s yard. Its façade, adorned with carved stone- and woodwork, plus, in a Gothic niche in the centre of the façade, a figure of St Luke (carved by one of their men, John Cartwright), demonstrated the firm’s range as providers of both architectural ornament and figure sculpture. Following Robert Upton’s death at the age of 48 in January 1883, the firm continued as Norbury, Paterson and Co Ltd. In 1885, they described themselves as comprising ‘sculptors, carvers and general architectural decorators’, adding the proud boast that ‘nearly all the public buildings recently erected in this city and neighbourhood … bear evidence of the skill and elegant workmanship of the firm’. Norbury, Paterson and Co’s work includes: for the Sacred Heart Church (R.C.) in Prescot Street, Liverpool (1891), the architectural carving of the reredos and high altar; and for W.D. Caröe’s Adelphi Bank in Castle Street, Liverpool (c.1891–92), over the main entrance, a pair of spandrels and a decorative frieze, and in niches between the second-floor windows, five allegorical figures, all of which were carved by Charles E. Whiffen (then employed by the firm). In the Walker Art Gallery’s Spring Exhibition of 1893, both Whiffen and Cartwright exhibited works executed while in the employment of Norbury, Paterson and Co: Cartwright, his rough sketch model for the St Luke on the Myrtle Street building and Whiffen, his rough sketch models for two of the Adelphi Bank’s niche figures (‘Fortitude’ and ‘Plenty’), along with details of the stone carving and rough sketch models for the spandrels. Norbury, Paterson and Co themselves made two appearances at the Liverpool Autumn Exhibitions: in 1888 they contributed both a ‘Design for the Southport Lifeboat Disaster Memorial’ (the competition had been won the previous year by an architect, E.W. Johnson) and a portrait (presumably a bust) of the late David Lewis; and in 1901, three low reliefs in plaster, St Patrick’s Day, A Parody on the Boer War and The First of April. In 1898, the firm was paid for carving the inscriptions below the two sets of six relief panels either side of the central portico on the exterior of St George’s Hall, Liverpool. While the six to the left of the portico had all been designed and executed by Thomas Stirling Lee, he was awarded only two of those to the right; the remaining four were given to Charles John Allen and Conrad Dressler. But Allen, who was designated the two nearest the portico, supplied only the design, the carving he deputed to his assistant, Frank Norbury (1872–1965), Alfred’s eldest son. Norbury, Paterson and Co apparently ceased operating in the early years of the twentieth century and by the time of the 1911 census Alfred Norbury was working as a sculptor and carver on his own account.
Ancestry website sources: Church of England Baptisms … Liverpool, St Peter, 1846–1847; England censuses for 1851, 1861, 1871, 1881, 1891, 1901, 1911, 1921; England and Wales, Civil Registration Death Index … 1934, Q3; various Liverpool street and trade directories.
Bibliography: Building News, 23 June 1882, pp. 760, 766 (engr. of St Luke’s Art Workshops); T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Liverpool, Liverpool, 1997, pp. 15, 94, 119, 256, 261–63, 285; Historic England: New West End Synagogue; Liverpool Mercury, 16 January 1883 (Robert Upton death notice); Mapping Sculpture: (i) Alfred Norbury, (ii) Norbury, Paterson & Co Ltd; E. Morris and E. Roberts, Public Sculpture of Cheshire and Merseyside, Liverpool, 2012, pp. xvi, 47, 200, 205–06, 275; N. Pevsner and R. Pollard, Lancashire: Liverpool and the South West (The Buildings of England), New Haven and London, 2006, pp. 96, 281, 403; J. Sharples, Liverpool (Pevsner Architectural Guides), New Haven and London, 2004, pp. 206, 236, 249, 261.
Terry Cavanagh, October 2025
