Person

Archer, John Lee (1791 - 1852)

Born
26 April 1791
Ireland
Died
4 December 1852
Stanley, Tasmania, Australia
Occupation
Engineer and Architect

Summary

John Archer was Civil Engineer and Colonial Architect to Van Diemen's Land 1826-1838 and police magistrate for the district of Horton 1838 until his death. Among the many buildings he designed are Parliament, the Ordnance Stores in Salamanca Place and a number of churches. His outstanding engineering work was the stone bridge over the Macquarie River at Ross.

Details

Associated Engineering Works:

Bridges and harbour works:
* 1827-1830. Hobart (wharf and waterfront), Sullivan's Cove improvements;
* 1828. Hobart Rivulet realignment;
* 1829-1835. Richmond Bridge; repairs;
* 1831. Harrington Street Bridge;
* 1831-1836. Ross Bridge;
* 1835. Bridgewater Causeway;
* 1835. Jordan River Bridge, repairs and new pier design;
* 1836-1837. Argyle Street Bridge.

Lighthouses:
* 1833-1838. Low Head Lighthouse;
* 1835-1838. Cape Bruny Lighthouse.

Chronology

1809 - 1812
Career position - Apprenticed to Charles Beazley, a London Architect
1812 - c. 1813
Career position - Assistant, working for Architect Samuel Beazley
c. 1813 - c. 1819
Career position - Drawing clerk, under engineer John Rennie, London. Including some work on Waterloo Bridge and Southwark Bridge.
c. 1819 - c. 1826
Career position - Engineer and architect, Ireland, under engineer John Archer, his father, including work on the Royal Canal, Dublin.
1826
Career event - Appointed 'Civil engineer in Van Diemen's Land'
1827
Life event - Migrated to Hobart, Tasmania.
1827 - c. 1838
Career position - Civil engineer and Colonial architect, Tasmania.
1838 - 1852
Career position - Police magistrate, Horton district, Tasmania
1852
Buried - Circular Head cemetery, Stanley, Tasmania.

Related Corporate Bodies

Published resources

Books

  • Smith, Roy, John Lee Archer, Tasmanian Architect and Engineer (Tasmania: Tasmanian Historical Research Association, 1962), xii + 70p illus. pp. Details

Book Sections

Edited Books

  • Bailey, M. R.; Chrimes, M. M.; Cox, R. C.; Cross-Rudkin, P. S. M.; Hurst, B. L.; McWilliam, R. C.; Rennison, R. W.; Ruddock, E. C.; Sutherland, R. J. M.; Swailes, T. ed., Biographical Dictionary of Civil Engineers in Great Britain and Ireland, Volume 2: 1830-1890 (London, United Kingdom: Thomas Telford Publishing, 2008), 907 pp. 'Archer, John Lee', pp.21-22. Details

Resources

See also

Rosanne Walker; Ken McInnes

EOAS ID: biogs/P003341b.htm

This Edition: 2026 February - 1926 Centenaries
Kooyang - Gariwerd calendar - Late summer: late January to late March - season of eels
Reference: https://www.bom.gov.au/resources/indigenous-weather-knowledge/indigenous-seasonal-calendars/gariwerd-calendar#bom-anchor-list__item-kooyang-season-of-eels

Publisher: Swinburne University of Technology.

Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
What do we mean by this?

The Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation uses the Online Heritage Resource Manager (OHRM), a relational data curation and web publication system developed by the eScholarship Research Centre and its predecessors at the University of Melbourne 1999-2020. The OHRM has been maintained by Gavan McCarthy since 2020.

Cite this page: https://www.eoas.info/biogs/P003341b.htm

For earlier editions see the Internet Archive at: https://web.archive.org/web/*/www.eoas.info

"... the rengitj, as a visible mark or imprint on the land, is characterised as a place of origin, the repository of all names, as well as a kind of mapped visual expression of the connection between people and places which is to be carried out in the temporal sequence of the journey." Fanca Tamisari (1998) 'Body, Vision and Movement: In the footprints of the ancestors'. Oceania 68(4) p260