Culshaw and Sumners
Much of its work was routine and mundane, but it did produce some notable buildings, including office blocks, warehouses, domestic properties, workhouses, churches, and a hospital.
He was apprenticed to the Birkenhead architect Charles Reed (later Verelst), and while there won a competition for the layout of Cressington Park, Liverpool.
He then went to London where he worked with architects, including Charles Barry, before undertaking a tour of the Continent to study architecture.
[8] Before he joined Culshaw, he had created an imaginative but unexecuted scheme for the development of the area around St George's Hall in Liverpool, and designed two houses in High Victorian Gothic style for Dr Drysdale in Waterloo.
[3] The practice is particularly interesting because an archive of over 6.000 documents produced between the mid-1830s and 1873, including over 3,500 drawings, have survived, although there are no associated financial records or correspondence.
[20] Many of Culshaw's designs were derived from existing buildings, although he did introduce some new features, including rows of large sash windows to improve the light available for the examination of cotton samples.
[22] He also designed 16 schemes for remodelling or building new warehouses,[5] and created workhouses in Whiston, Ormskirk, Runcorn, and West Derby.
[30][31][32] The architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner, writing in 1969, was particularly impressed by Sumners' design for a mortuary chapel in Everton (built in 1866, demolished after 1969).
[23] Discussing the two main partners, Sharples expresses the opinion that, while Sumners "certainly had talent", Culshaw was "a designer of limited imagination".
[42][43] Although the practice gained a large number of commissions, many of these were for mundane and routine work, such as planning the alteration, extension, or conversion of existing buildings.
[a] The output of the practice is considered by Sharples to be a reflection of "the immense quantity and variety of building generated by the economic powerhouse of Victorian Liverpool".
