Architect, surveyor and builder, born in Warrington. He started work at Howley Saw Mills at the age of 12, was articled to the architect John Pierpoint, in Bold Street, Warrington, at 18, and by 1871, aged 23, he had established himself as an architect and builder employing 30 men and two boys. In 1883 he joined Warrington Town Council and he was Mayor from 1897 until 1899. His practice, J.E. Wright, Garnett and Wright, became, with William Owen, one of the leading Warrington architectural firms of the period. They designed housing for Warrington Garden Suburb, shops and offices in a Georgian style for Warrington, and many inns for the brewers, Greenall, Whitley & Co. Their Howard Buildings in Bridge Street, Warrington (1906), built on the site of lodgings occupied by the prison reformer John Howard in 1777, are decorated with terracotta reliefs of Howard visiting and freeing chained prisoners.
Ancestry website sources: Lancashire … Church of England Births and Baptisms … Bishop’s Transcripts, Warrington, 1840–1849; England Censuses 1861, 1871, 1881, 1891; Cheshire … Church of England Burials … Parish Register, Warrington, St Elphin, 1899–1911.
Bibliography: E. Morris and E. Roberts, Public Sculpture of Cheshire and Merseyside, Liverpool, 2012, pp. 229–30; R. Pollard and N. Pevsner, Lancashire: Liverpool and the South West (The Buildings of England), New Haven and London, 2006, pp. 83, 604, 617, 619, 628, 634; Warrington Guardian Yearbook, Warrington, 1899, p. 33.
Emma Roberts, 2012; revised, Terry Cavanagh, December 2025