George Wilkinson (1814-1890)

George Wilkinson originated in Oxfordshire, he had been invited to Ireland in 1839 by the Poor Law Commission after building 24 workhouses in England. Workhouses were built all over Ireland in response to the Irish Poor Law Act of 1838. The workhouse system aimed to force the lazy and idle into work, even when there was no work to be found. In Ireland as the Poor Law’s official architect, he was given the task of designing 130 workhouses for the Poor Law Unions.
Wilkinson’s advice that each workhouse was to be ‘uniform and cheap, durable and unattractive’ strongly emphasised the deterrent aspect of Poor Law relief which strove to ensure that only the really destitute would apply.
He spent the next 11 years on these, after which he designed railway stations in Ireland mostly for the Midland Great Western Railway Co. His brother was Oxford architect William Wilkinson.