Thomas Elliot Harrison

For other people named Thomas Harrison, see Thomas Harrison (disambiguation).

Thomas Harrison
TE Harrison painted by Walter William Ouless c1884
Born	April 4, 1808 Fulham, London
Died	March 20, 1888 Whitburn, South Tyneside
Nationality	English
Education	Kepier School
Work
Engineering discipline	Civil engineering
Institution memberships	Institution of Civil Engineers (president)
Significant projects	Victoria Viaduct, High Level Bridge

The Victoria Viaduct over the River Wear.

Thomas Elliot Harrison (April 4, 1808 - March 20, 1888) achieved prominence as a British engineer.

Biography and career

Born in Fulham in London as the son of an employee of Somerset House, Harrison moved soon after his birth with his family and settled at Fulwell Grange, Monkwearmouth, Sunderland. (A large mansion, now demolished, stood in the grounds of what is now Thompson Park.) Here his father started a shipbuilding yard on the River Wear, but lost his fortune in 1844. After completing his education at the Kepier School in Houghton-le-Spring, Harrison was apprenticed to Messrs Chapman, engineers and surveyors in Newcastle upon Tyne. He showed marked ability and made the acquaintance of George and Robert Stephenson.

Harrison surveyed part of the London-Birmingham line and the Stanhope and Tyne railway. This latter included the famous Victoria Viaduct at Penshaw, which he planned and supervised. This viaduct is built on the pattern of the Roman bridge at Alcántara in Spain. The Penshaw Monument to Lord Durham stands on the hill nearby. As Nikolaus Pevsner says: 'Is there any other place where one can stand beneath a 'Roman' viaduct and see a 'Greek' temple?'

Harrison also surveyed the Newcastle-Carlisle line and a number of other lines. With Robert Stephenson he worked on the High Level Bridge at Newcastle, and when Stephenson retired as railway engineer, Harrison took over as engineer-in-chief of the York-Newcastle-Berwick line, where he deployed considerable powers of organisation. At the 1849 dinner in Newcastle Central Station to celebrate the completion of this line, Stephenson said:

“

Upon Mr Harrison the whole responsibility [for the works] has fallen, and I believe they have been executed without a single flaw.

”

In 1858, Harrison designed and carried out the Jarrow docks project, using a number of remarkable hydraulic devices, and also designed the Hartlepool docks. He became president of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1873. He died at home in Whitburn. At the time he was very much involved in the designs for the Forth Bridge.

External links

• Steam Index biography

Professional and academic associations
Preceded by Thomas Hawksley	President of the Institution of Civil Engineers December 1873 – December 1875	Succeeded by George Robert Stephenson