William Henry Lynn

Who was William Henry Lynn?

William Henry Lynn was an Irish-born architect with a practice in Belfast and the north of England. He is noted for his Ruskinian Venetian Gothic public buildings, which include Chester Town Hall and Barrow-in-Furness Town Hall.

In 1846 Lynn was articled to Sir Charles Lanyon in Belfast; under Lanyon he prepared the drawings for the original building housing Queens College, Belfast. He and Lanyon formed a partnership in 1854; in 1860, with Charles' son John Lanyon as junior partner, they incorporated as Lanyon, Lynn and Lanyon. The partnership dissolved in 1872, when Lynn struck out on his own.

For their first joint projects, Lynn and the elder Lanyon produced bank buildings at Newtownards, County Down, and at Dungannon, County Tyrone, which are two of the earliest Irish examples of the Venetian Gothic style that was being championed by John Ruskin. In Belfast the firm produced urbane Italianate commercial structures, in Dublin, the Church of St Andrew and the Unitarian Church, St Stephen's Green was "justly described as the best example extant of a modern Gothic church on a narrow street frontage, the treatment being quite original and altogether admirable". In Jordanstown, Co.