Dictionary of Irish Architects 1720 - 1940

County surveyor for Co. Armagh, 1834-1846. According to O'Donoghue, Henry Lill Lindsay was the younger son of the Hon. Charles Lindsay, Bishop of Kildare, and his second wife, Catherine Eliza (née Coussmaker) and was born in Dublin in October 1800. He had been engaged on works for a number of Grand Juries in Ireland for over ten years when he was appointed the first county surveyor for Co. Armagh on 17 May 1834. Two years later he published An Essay on the agriculture of the county of Armagh (1836) and in 1837 The Present state of the Irish Grand Jury Law considered as it respects the promotion and execution of public works. By this time of the publication of the latter, his own relations with the Grand Jury of Co. Armagh were not good, the Grand Jury believing that he was neglecting his public responsibilities in favour of his own private business. The dissatisfaction of the Grand Jury with his performance reached a climax in 1845, when he took up the appointment of acting engineer to the Newry, Armagh & Enniskillen Junction Railway.(1) Under pressure from the Grand Jury, he resigned from the county surveyorship in February 1846 to be succeeded by HENRY DAVISON.  HENRY DAVISON.

Lindsay subsequently emigrated to Australia and was living in Melbourne from circa 1851 until at least 1863, when he applied to become an agent for the Sun Fire Office.(2)  In the 1870s he appears to have returned to Dublin, where he died there on 17 February 1879.(3) O'Donoghue states that he was unmarried; but he could perhaps be the 'Henry Sill[sic] Lindsay' who married Helena Crawley at Kilcoo, Co. Down, on 18 December 1845.(4)  He was a subscriber to Samuel Lewis's A Topographical dictionary of Ireland (1837).

ICEI: founder member, 1835;(5)  reads paper on 'Laying down new roads in a thickly undulating country', September 1836; council member, 1845-1846;(6) had ceased to be a member by 1849.
RIA: member in 1846-1848.(7)

See BIBLIOGRAPHY. BIBLIOGRAPHY.



References

All information in this entry not otherwise accounted for is from Brendan O'Donoghue, The Irish County Surveyors 1834-1944 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2007), 241-243, which gives the fullest account of Lindsay's career.


(1) Armagh Guardian, 1 Jul 1845.
(2) www.aigs.org.au/letterfromukmarch.htm (B.O'D.).
(3) He is described as 'late of 31 Blessington Street' an a notice to his creditors published in the Irish Times on 3 Apr 1879 (information from Brendan O'Donoghue, 2015). 
(4) www.familysearch.org.
(5) Photocopy of transcript of minutes of first meeting of Engineers' Society of Ireland, 6 Aug 1835, in IAA, Jones File F73.
(6) Jones transcripts from Pettigrew & Oulton's directories.
(7) See note 4, above.


Author Title Date Details
Lindsay, Henry Lill An Essay on the agriculture of the county of Armagh 1836 Armagh: John McWatters, 1836.
Lindsay, Henry Lill The Present state of the Irish Grand Jury Law considered as it respects the promotion and execution of public works; and an improved plan of jurisprudence recommended 1837 Armagh: John McWatters, 1837.