Dictionary of Irish Architects 1720 - 1940

Quantity surveyor with the Dublin firm of Patterson & Kempster, 1898-1955. Ernest John Anthony, who was born in Rochester, Kent, in about 1875, was the eldest child of John Anthony, a building and quantity surveyor in Rochester, and his wife Mary.(1) He worked for the London quantity surveyor Henry Riley, of Buckingham Street, before coming to Ireland in connection with the building of two military barracks in Dublin.   His diary for 1892 records his arrival in Dublin on 31 March and and his starting work at Marlborough Barracks for the Dublin builder James Philip Pile the following day. On 1 March 1898 he entered the office of Patterson & Kempster at a salary of £3.10s a week. Ten years later, on 1 January 1908, following Patterson's death the previous year, he became a partner in the firm. In 1914 Kempster effectively retired and in 1918 he died, leaving Anthony as sole owner of the practice for almost thirty years, a period of many upheavals and difficulties in which business gradually declined. It was not until 1947 that Anthony formed a new partnership with Gordon Aston (d.2000), who in turn became the owner of the practice when Antony died on 21 October 1955.

According to the 1911 census, Antony married his Dublin-born wife Sara Sophia circa 1897.   Both husband and wife were members of the Plymouth Brethren and at the time of the census had a thirteen-year-old daughter, Evelyn.

The papers of Patterson, Kempster & Shortall in the Irish Architectural Archive (Accs. 77/1 and 2010/67) contain Anthony's diaries for the years 1892 and 1895 (before he joined the practice), 1898-1902 and 1904-1932.

Addresses: Home:  14 Leinster Road, Rathmines, 1901;  26 Ashdale Road, Terenure, 1911.



References

All information in this entry not otherwise accounted for is from Gordon Aston, One Hundred Years of Quantity Surveying: the annals of Patterson & Kempster, 1860-1960 (Hinds Publishing, Dublin, 2007).

(1) English census returns, 1881 (www.familysearch.org).