Rise (and fall) of the Victorian genius who gave us Tower Bridge
Architect Horace Jones designed the world-famous landmark and its mighty 1,200-ton bascules. So why, ahead of the 130th anniversary of the engineering marvel next month, has he been all but written out of its history?
ARGUABLY London’s most iconic building, Tower Bridge marks 130 years next month since it was opened by the Prince of Wales and its famous bascules were first raised to let the first ship through. This pioneering project had taken eight years of incredibly difficult engineering and stonework to build.
Sadly, the man who designed the bridge, the City of London’s chief architect Sir Horace Jones, was not present at the ceremony; he had died seven years earlier.
Curiously, nor was his name present on the heavy brass plaques that were bolted to the towers to commemorate the occasion. Lots of royalty, aldermen and officials, but no Jones.
In fact, it’s hard to find acknowledgement of Jones’ work anywhere in the City. The list of the buildings that he designed there reads like a catalogue of London’s most popular sights: the great markets at Smithfield, Leadenhall, and Billingsgate, the Temple Bar monument at the entrance to Fleet Street. He even had a hand in the Holborn Viaduct. Yet he is not credited on any of them.
Further inquiry reveals that there is no blue plaque over his home and no mention at the ancient Guildhall, much of which he rebuilt. His portrait in the Guildhall Art Gallery has been relegated to the basement. No biographies tell his story.
In short: Jones has disappeared down a black hole.
The crowds love his buildings, but few people have ever heard of him. It’s almost as if there was a conspiracy to brush him out of history.
The immediate thought is that there must have been some scandal. But no. Jones was a tough nut who made enemies easily, but he led a very straightforward life.
He was born just off Cheapside in 1819 and worked his way up the professional ladder until he was appointed City Architect in 1864, a role he kept until his death in 1887.
He married and had a daughter. He was even knighted by Queen Victoria, the ultimate token of respectability. As a young man, he earned his living competing for contracts to build gentlemen’s houses and public works.
His big break came in 1847 when he was chosen to design a new town hall for Cardiff – in circumstances that said much about the sort of man he was.
Cardiff had budgeted £8,000 for the work. Jones submitted a bid costing £11,699, but backed by a price guarantee.
Jones told the council that no one could build a town hall for £8,000 “even where building materials are as cheap as at Cardiff”. The local authority took him at his word, and was delighted with the result: a fine, neo-classical pile on St Mary Street which served the city until it was demolished in 1914.
Indeed, demolition was the fate of much of Jones’ work and the Luftwaffe played a part too. In London, he designed an upmarket housing project in Kentish Town, some of which survives. Caversham Park outside Reading is an early work.
HE ALSO designed one of the first large department stores on Oxford Street for Marshall & Snelgrove, now also gone. But it is as City Architect that he should be remembered.
Jones got the job at a good time. The City was set on creating a capital befitting the world’s greatest empire and that meant getting rid of Dickensian squalor, putting up splendid buildings and opening new vistas.
The city’s ancient markets were central to this: they were filthy, blocked the streets and blighted entire neighbourhoods. Smithfield, by far the biggest, was the market for live animals. Cattle and sheep were driven there through public thoroughfares, dropping their soil on the way. They were slaughtered with no arrangements for dealing with the butchered remains.
Jones threw himself into the redevelopment job, giving his prodigious imagination full rein. He created the palatial arcaded building we know today, with its great towers and balustrades. But it was not only stunning to look at.
Jones was a practical man who understood that a meat market had to be fresh and cool. He designed the roof of wood rather than iron because it is a better insulator and he inserted louvred windows to circulate the air. The butchers loved it and every slot was rented when it opened in 1868.
The market is still in operation today and will be back in the news soon as part of it becomes the new home to the Museum of London. Jones went on to perform similar feats at Billingsgate, the fish market on the river, where he built over mud flats 20 feet deep, and Leadenhall Market, whose magical interior is still an inspiration today, not least to Harry Potter fans who flock from all over the world to the filming location for Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.
But his greatest project was still to come. Victorian London’s booming population and trade were creating huge congestion, particularly along the Thames, where there was no crossing below London Bridge for the millions who lived further down.
Jones felt deeply challenged by this problem and began to form ideas for a new bridge.
The task was to create a crossing without stopping ships coming up to the Pool of London. This meant either a very high bridge that ships could sail under, or a ground level one that opened. Jones, who travelled extensively in Holland and saw Van Gogh-style lifting bridges, was convinced that an opening bridge was the answer.
For more than 10 years, he fought battles with numerous interested parties – the ship
pers, the government, even his own council – to get his plan accepted.
At last, in 1886, Parliament approved it, and work started the following year, only for Jones to die at the comparatively early age of 68, possibly from overwork.The job of completing the bridge was taken on by the project engineer John Wolfe Barry (whose name does appear on the plaques).
Lift bridge technology was well-known, but this was much the biggest ever attempted, and was full of risk.
It took twice as long to build than planned, but there were no major catastrophes and its completion was hailed as another Victorian engineering triumph.
So why has a man who did so much sunk into oblivion? One reason is architectural snobbery.
Tellingly, Jones was turned down for the presidency of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1880 because he was employed by a local authority and was not considered an “art architect”. RIBA rectified this snub a couple of years later, but Jones, deeply hurt, remained tainted with the reputation of not being an architect in the “true” sense.
This remains the case: Apollo art magazine, in a 2019 article marking the 200th anniversary of Jones’ birth, described him in scathing terms as having a career “more based in bureaucracy than inspiration”.
Others have likened Tower Bridge, with its fairytale look, to Disneyland architecture, criticising its “dishonest” appearance.
Nikolaus Pevsner, the architectural guru, described Jones’ work as having “no architectural value”.
There have even been attempts to take the credit away from Jones for Tower Bridge. It is true his early death meant that the structure had to be finished by Wolfe Barry, and the exterior design was completed by one of Jones’ colleagues, George Stevenson. But even Barry credited Jones with the conception and original design. The authorities have also shown a strange lack of interest.
The City Corporation has done little to promote Jones’ work, even though it occupies buildings for which he was responsible.
The lack of a blue plaque is surprising, particularly when one learns that Jones has not been turned down for one – his has never even been proposed!
IHAVE corrected this by lodging an application, which English Heritage tells me will be considered later this year. If approved, the plaque would go on Jones’ house in Devonshire Place, Marylebone. He has no direct descendants; his one daughter died in Haslemere in 1969, unmarried.
As always, there remains a gulf between what architects think of as good design and what the public likes. In Jones’ case, the gulf is huge. Tower Bridge provides one of the most inspiring sights in London – evocative, fascinating, thrilling even.
His majestic markets command admiration. His buildings are visited, photographed and loved by thousands every day.
He is arguably the most popular architect London ever produced. Yet his achievement is ignored or begrudged, his name largely forgotten. Very telling is the fact that no biography has ever been published of Horace Jones.
My new book about the man who designed Tower Bridge is the first to appear in the 137 years since he died.
Now ahead of the 130th anniversary of his most famous design, it is time for Jones’ name to be up where it belongs – as one of the greats of the Victorian age.
●Horace Jones: Architect of Tower Bridge, by David Lascelles (Profile, £18.99) is out now. Visit expressbookshop.com or call Express Bookshop on 020 3176 3832. Free UK P&P on orders over £25