Jonathan Simpson

Jonathan Simpson was born at Bolton in 1850. He served his articles with J. Lomax in Bolton and began practising there himself in 1873. He was responsible for a considerable number of buildings in the Bolton area including many large hotels for Magee Marshall & Co., brewers; model dwellings for Dr. Samuel Taylor Chadwick, a notable Bolton philanthropist; the Blackburn Road Congregational Church, the gift of the Lever brothers; and the swimming baths for Bolton School.  Away from Bolton he did additions to "Springs", Wallingford, in 1906 for John Wormald, his brother in law and a director of Mather and Platt; also an antiques showroom in Hitchen.

Jonathan Simpson had been a close friend of William Lever (Lord Leverhulme) since childhood when they had attended the same school together. Like Lever he was also a collector though on a somewhat more modest scale. Lever employed him on several commissions in the Bolton and Rivington area including the restoration of the Great Barn at Rivington. However, he was rather less involved in the development of Port Sunlight where Lever Brothers commissioned him to design three blocks of cottages, but not until 1897. He became a Fellow of the RIBA in 1906 and retired in 1932.