Harrogate is a spa town in the district and county of North Yorkshire, England. Historically in the West Riding of Yorkshire, the town is a tourist destination and its visitor attractions include its spa waters and RHS Harlow Carr gardens. 13 miles (21 km) away from the town centre is the Yorkshire Dales National Park and the Nidderdale AONB.
Sir Joseph Edgar Boehm, 1st Baronet, was an Austrian-born British medallist and sculptor, best known for the "Jubilee head" of Queen Victoria on coinage, and the statue of the Duke of Wellington at Hyde Park Corner. During his career Boehm maintained a large studio in London and produced a significant volume of public works and private commissions. A speciality of Boehm's was the portrait bust; there are many examples of these in the National Portrait Gallery. He was often commissioned by the Royal Family and members of the aristocracy to make sculptures for their parks and gardens. His works were many, and he exhibited 123 of them at the Royal Academy from 1862 to his death in 1890.
The Victoria Memorial is a monument to Queen Victoria, located at the end of The Mall in London by the sculptor Sir Thomas Brock. Designed in 1901, it was unveiled on 16 May 1911, though it was not completed until 1924. It was the centrepiece of an ambitious urban planning scheme, which included the creation of the Queen’s Gardens to a design by Sir Aston Webb, and the refacing of Buckingham Palace by the same architect.
West Park United Reformed Church is located in the West Park area of Harrogate, England, and is a Grade II listed building. It was designed in Nonconformist Gothic style as West Park Congregational Church by Lockwood & Mawson and completed in 1862 for around £5,000. Along with Belvedere Mansion across the road, it was intended as part of the prestigious entrance to the Victoria Park development. For the Congregationalists it was meant to house an increasing congregation of visitors brought to the spa town by the recently-built railways. It became a United Reformed church in 1972.
Catherine Mawer was an architectural sculptor who worked alongside her husband Robert Mawer, then following his death in 1854 she ran the family stone yard as a master sculptor at Great George Street, Leeds, West Yorkshire, England, until 1859. The other master sculptor in her 1854–1859 company, which was known as Mrs Mawer, was her nephew William Ingle who supervised the stone yard and onsite works from 1854. Her apprentices were Matthew Taylor, Benjamin Payler, and her son Charles Mawer. All the apprentices later had independent careers as sculptors. After her son came of age in 1870, she continued working alongside Charles and her nephew William in the partnership Mawer and Ingle at the same address. Catherine was a founder member of the Mawer Group, which comprised all of the above Leeds architectural sculptors. During her lifetime, the Mawer group produced some strongly lifelike and often unflattering portraits, full of movement, including portraits of men with overhanging moustaches and cavernous mouths. These portraits continued after the deaths of Robert Mawer and William Ingle, but stopped appearing at her death in 1877. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that this style of work was her own.
William Ingle was an architectural sculptor in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. He specialised in delicately undercut bas relief and small stand-alone stone sculptures of natural and imaginary flora and fauna on churches and on civic, commercial and domestic buildings. He was apprenticed to his uncle Robert Mawer. After Mawer's death in 1854 he worked in partnership with his aunt Catherine Mawer and his cousin Charles Mawer in the company Mawer and Ingle. Notable works by Ingle exist on Leeds Town Hall, Endcliffe Hall, Sheffield and Moorlands House, Leeds. He sometimes exhibited gentle humour in his ecclesiastical work, such as faces peering through greenery, and mischievous humour on secular buildings, such as comic rabbits and frogs among foliage. He died of tuberculosis at age 41 years, having suffered the disease for two years.
John Farrah, F.L.S., F.R.Met.S was a British grocer, confectioner, biologist and meteorologist from Harrogate, North Riding of Yorkshire, England. In the late 19th century he developed the business strategy for Farrah's toffee shop which he inherited from his family in Harrogate. He was made a fellow of the Meteorological Society in 1894. He was president of the botanical section of the Yorkshire Naturalists' Union, working with Thomas Sheppard, George Edward Massee, William Eagle Clarke and Charles Crossland, and in 1903 discovered the mycological species Entoloma farrahi, which was named after him, although there has been some question as to its identity since then. He was a close friend of Harrogate historian William Grainge and for some years they were "constant companions", supporting each other in their work. The American mycologist George Francis Atkinson described him as a "great Yorkshire character". Farrah married three times, and had three children.
The Harrogate Club is a private members' club, open to men and women, based in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England. Founded in 1857, it is located on Victoria Avenue, Harrogate.
Thomas Holroyd was an English portrait and landscape painter working in Harrogate, North Riding of Yorkshire, England. Before his marriage he undertook painting tours to the United States, Canada, Europe, Egypt, Russia and the Holy Land. Returning to Harrogate, he painted portraits of the local worthies there. He shared responsibility for the successful photography business T & J Holroyd with his brother James, and continued to run the business after his brother died. Holroyd was a founding member of Harrogate Liberal Club.
William John Seward Webber was an English sculptor who created civic statuary, and busts of national heroes and local worthies, in marble. He sculpted the statue of Queen Victoria for the Jubilee Monument in Harrogate, North Riding of Yorkshire, England in 1887. An early success was his Warrior and Wounded Youth group of 1878, executed while he was still a student. His busts include portraits of the Duke of Clarence, John Charles Dollman, Henry Phillpotts, John Bowring, John Ruskin, Richard Jefferies, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Charles Darwin, Walter Scott, Thomas Carlyle, Robert Burns and Thomas Holroyd.
H. E. and A. Bown was an architectural practice in Harrogate, North Riding of Yorkshire, England, in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Its two partners were Henry Edwin Bown who started the business and died at the age of 36, and his brother Arthur Bown, who carried on the business until he retired in 1911.
Grove Road Cemetery, Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England, was formerly known as Harrogate Cemetery. It was established in 1864 after the spa town expanded and the graveyard at Christ Church became full. The cemetery once had a pair of chapels with spires, designed by Thomas Charles Sorby. Although they were admired by local residents who felt it enhanced the town view, they were demolished in 1958. However the lodge and gates, also designed by Sorby, remain.
Robert Ackrill was an English journalist, newspaper proprietor, founder of newspapers, printer and writer, working for most of his career in Harrogate, England. During the 19th century he owned six newspapers in the North and West Ridings of Yorkshire, via his company Ackrill Newspapers, having founded three of them. Ackrill's descendants and relatives continued to run or be involved with Ackrill newspapers for at least a hundred years, the final incarnation of the company under that name being dissolved in 2020.
George Dawson was an English builder, property developer and alderman. The son of a village labourer, he was a self-made man who started as a cooper, became a rich entrepreneur and built himself a mansion.
Richard Ellis was an English builder, property developer, alderman, mayor, and a public benefactor to his town. The son of a blacksmith, he was a self-made man who started as a joiner and became a rich developer who joined High and Low Harrogate into a single town, helped obtain a Charter of Corporation, and promoted the erection of civic buildings appropriate for a spa town. Thus he became known as the Bismarck of Harrogate, his achievement in joining two villages to create a single town having been wittily compared in the 19th century with Bismarck's unification of Germany.
John Smith was a Scottish banker and philanthropist. He was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, and spent most of his adult life running Beckett's Bank in Leeds, England. In retirement, he lived in Harrogate.
The Statue of Queen Victoria stands on the sea front at the bottom of Grand Avenue in Hove on the south coast of England. The statue is one of 14 by Thomas Brock and was unveiled in February 1901, the month after Queen Victoria's death. It is a grade II listed building.
John Turner was an English draper, landlord, and moneylender, whose perceived behaviour led to his reputation as a miser.
Frances Darlington was an English artist of the New Sculpture movement. In the early 20th century she created decorative panels, busts, garden statuary, medallions, group sculptures, and statuettes, in various materials including copper, bronze and painted plaster. She also designed a railway poster, featuring Ilkley.
Harrogate War Memorial, also known as Harrogate Cenotaph, in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England, was designed by Ernest Prestwich and unveiled by Henry Lascelles, 5th Earl of Harewood in 1923, in the presence of 10,000 people. It was said to be one of the last of England's outdoor war memorials to be unveiled, following the First World War.
