Architect, of Belfast, Dublin and Drogheda. Herbert Sykes was born in England in 1869 and educated at Trinity College, Dublin. No record of his architectural training has been found, but he was presumably living in England when his first child was born there in 1892 or 1893. He is first heard of as an architect in Ireland in 1895 as the partner of WILLIAM JOHN WATERMAN ROOME WILLIAM JOHN WATERMAN ROOME in Belfast . The following year he became a member of the Society of Architects, giving Whitehall Chambers, Ann Street, Belfast, as his address. By 1897 the partnership with Roome had come to an end, and in 1900 or 1901 Sykes moved to Dublin. In 1901 he joined the Architectural Association of Ireland and exhibited a design for a 'New Methodist Mission Church' at the Royal Hibernian Academy (no. 287). He lived at various addresses in Rathmines during the first decade of the new century. He had moved to Drogheda by February 1911 and was still there in 1914. No further activities are recorded in the Irish Builder, although he lived on for many years, dying on 22 October 1956. At the time of the 1911 census, he had been married to his English-born wife, Marian Trevor, for nineteen years and had two daughters and three sons.
AAI: elected member, 1901; ceased membership, 1904 or 1905.
Society of Architects: elected member, 1896.
Addresses: Whitehall Buildings, Ann Street, Belfast, 1896; 24 Castlewood Avenue, Rathmines, 1901; 7 Kenilworth Park, Rathmines, 1903; 5 Grosvenor Square, Rathmines, 1907; 60 Fair Street, Drogheda, <=1911->=1914.
See WORKS.
References
Information in this entry not otherwise accounted for is from the 1911 census of Ireland, http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/ (last visited Nov 2009) and from Directory of British Architects 1834-1914 (RIBA 2001), II, 745-6.
Paul Larmour, 'From building site to mission field', Perspective May/June 1997, 45.
See note 1, above.
Lists of members in AAI Green Books.
Drawing signed 'H. Sykes, MSA, Fair St, Drogheda' and dated 20 Feb 1911 in IAA, Bank of Ireland drawings collection, Acc. 2006/65. He is described as 'late of Dublin' in IB 53, 8 Jul 1911, 462.
The list of members in the copy of the Green Book for 1904-5 in IAA is incomplete.
RHA Index, III, 197.
List of members in AAI Green Book (1904).
Thom's Directory (1907).
