Architect, of Dublin, London, Windsor and Bristol, a son of HUGH BYRNE HUGH BYRNE and a grandson of PATRICK BYRNE. PATRICK BYRNE. Patrick James. Byrne, who was born circa 1840, was articled to his father and admitted as a student of the RIAI in 1864. He exhibited at the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1863 and 1864 from addresses at 41 Gardiner Street Lower (the working address of Patrick and Hugh Byrne) and Royal Canal Bank, Phibsborough (the address from which Hugh Byrne was buried in 1866). While in Dublin he held the position of assistant draughtsman at the War Office.
It was presumably after his father's death in 1866 that Patrick J. Byrne moved to England, where he entered the office of Henry Astley Darbishire in London. He is recorded in the English 1871 census as an unmarried, thirty-one-year-old architect, living at 4 Brunswick Villas, Osborn Road, Windsor, with his two younger sisters, Mary and Isabella. Early in that year he was placed third in the competition for the Surveyorship of the Royal Borough of Windsor. By 1872 he was practising from 55 High Street, Windsor, the address from which he entered the Watford Public Library Competition, winning third prize, and by 1876 from 31 Park Street, Windsor, from which he entered the Staines Town Hall competition, winning first prize. The 1881 census shows him at 32 Park Street, Windsor, with an English wife, Barbara, a three-month-old daughter, Isabella, and a 'Sick Nurse'. In the early 1880s he had an office at 303 Strand, London. In 1881-1882 he was in partnership with James Crombie and from 1882 to 1886 with his fellow-Irishman JOHN CHARLES WILMOT JOHN CHARLES WILMOT . He was surveyor and sanitary inspector to the Windsor Rural Sanitary Authority, a post to which he was reappointed 'for a further period of three years' in June 1883. He exhibited at the RHA between 1882 and 1884. He left Windsor in the late 1880s and by the time of the 1891 census was living with his wife and eight children - of whom Isabella was actually the third - in Redcliff, Bristol. He appears to have died before the census of 1901, when only his wife Barbara is recorded.
RIBA: elected associate, 9 January 1882, having been proposed by H.A. Darbishire, G.A. Audsley and R. Kerr.
GLFI: A freemason, in March 1863 he was a candidate for admission to Royal Arch Chapter No. 100, Dublin, his address being given as 41 Lower Gardiner Street.
Addresses: 41 Gardiner Street Lower, Dublin, 1863; Royal Canal Bank, Phibsborough, 1864; 4 Brunswick Villas, Osborn Road, Windsor, 1871; 55 High Street Windsor, 1872; 31 Park Street, Windsor, 1876; 32 Park Street, Windsor, 1881; Lyons Inn Chambers, Strand, London, 1881-1884; 2 Hanover Terrace, Redcliff, Bristol, 1891.
See WORKS.
References
All information in this entry not otherwise attributed is from Directory of British Architects 1834-1914 (RIBA 2001), I, 318.
IB 25, 1 Oct 1883, 311.
RIAI council minutes, 7 Jan 1864, 9, and 5 Feb 1864, 10; general meeting minutes, 18 Feb 1864, 138.
Ann M. Stewart, The Royal Hibernian Academy of Arts: index of exhibitors and their works 1826-1979 (1985), 108. Apart from architectural designs, listed in WORKS, he exhibited views of the Bank of Ireland portico, the interior of the Royal Exchange and the Custom House (1861, nos. 564, 568, 571) and of Ballymascanlon House (1863, no. 489).
Isabella married Captain M. Petit Devoize, Chevalier of the Legion d'Honneur, of Nantes, in 1883.(Irish Times, 15 Sep 1883).
Irish Times, 8 Mar 1871.
Roger Harper, Victorian Architectural Competitions (1983), 167, citing B 30, ? ? 1872, 892.
Harper, op. cit., above, 154, citing B 34, ? ? 1876, 297.
IB 25, 1 Jun 1883, 178.
Stewart, op.cit., above, 106,108.
GLFI archives.