William Atkins

Who was William Atkins?

William Atkins was an Irish architect of the Victorian era.

A native of Cork, William Atkins is an architect whose fame has been lost to posterity, although in 1846 he received one of the largest public commissions in Cork city, to build the city and county asylum. This was a commission received from the Board of Works, and was being angled for at the time by the more established Cork architect Thomas Deane who was then engaged in the building of Queen's College Cork. Built in a revival Gothic style, 1846–53, this is popularly held to have the longest corridor in all of Europe - it is now converted into modern apartments.

His other works include:

Funerary Chapel, 1845 at Mount Jerome Cemetery Dublin, the first Puginian Gothic church in Dublin.

St Mary's Priory in Cork, which is in a Ruskinian neo-Romanesque style.

Oak Park, 1857–60, a private dwelling house.

He also received the first prize for a design for a new town hall for Cork in 1851, although this was never built.