WILLIAMS, STEPHEN WILLIAM (1837 - 1899), engineer, architect, and antiquary

Name: Stephen William Williams
Date of birth: 1837
Date of death: 1899
Gender: Male
Occupation: engineer, architect, and antiquary
Area of activity: Art and Architecture; Engineering, Construction, Naval Architecture and Surveying; History and Culture
Author: Robert Thomas Jenkins

Born 7 June 1837 at Mellington Hall, Churchstoke, Montgomeryshire. He was apprenticed to an engineer in Staffordshire; later, he worked with Benjamin Piercy on the Cambrian and other railways. In 1862 he became a surveyor and estate agent at Rhayader, where he also started to practise as an architect - this being the work which appealed most strongly to him; he continued his private practice even after he had been appointed county surveyor. The extent of his business was enormous; he was responsible for the repair of a large number of old mansions (as well as for building new ones) and public buildings, and of an even larger number of old churches. It is not without interest to remember that he valued the Nant-gwyllt estate when it was bought by the Birmingham corporation for the construction of the Elan Valley reservoir. He soon joined the Cambrian Archaeological Association, but the first of his long series of papers in Archæologia Cambrensis (this was on Castell Collen) did not appear until 1870; he was F.S.A. He became a considerable authority on the old Welsh monasteries - Talley, Strata Marcella, Cwm Hir, and above all, Strata Florida, the subject of his only book, The Cistercian Abbey of Strata Florida, 1889. He died 11 December 1899, during his year of office as high sheriff of Radnorshire.

Author

Published date: 1959

Article Copyright: http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/

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