Robert Jacomb-Hood

Robert Jacomb-Hood^[a] MICE (25 January 1822 – 10 May 1900) was a British railway engineer who rose to prominence as the Resident Engineer of the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway (LB&SCR). His work includes London Victoria station, London Bridge station, and Crystal Palace railway station. Outside of the railway industry, he also made significant contributions to The Crystal Palace and the National Gallery. He was elected as a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1847.

Born to a farmer who had inherited an estate from his cousin, Jacomb-Hood was originally headed for a career in law before he dropped out of university to instead become a railway engineer in 1841. After working in smaller railway projects for five years, he was appointed the Resident Engineer of the newly-formed LB&SCR in 1846. During his fourteen-year tenure as Resident Engineer, he was responsible for many stations and branch lines across the route.

After he transitioned to practising privately in 1860, Jacomb-Hood also found success in non-railway projects, and also became involved in railways across the world, including in the United States, India, Malta, and Argentina. He returned to the LB&SCR in 1883 as a board member, where he continued to work until his death in 1900. His work was recognised with various accolades including a Telford Medal. His son, George Percy Jacomb-Hood, was a successful painter and illustrator.

Jacomb-Hood's mother Susan (1822–?) was the daughter of John Kemp of Broom Hills, Essex.^[3] His father, also called Robert Jacomb-Hood (1794–1857), was born with the surname Jacomb and was a yeoman farmer. Upon the death of his cousin,^[4] the lawyer William Hood (1744–1833),^[5] Jacomb inherited Hood's estate at Bardon Hall in Bardon, Leicestershire; this was because Hood was the last male member of his family. However, this inheritance was on the condition that Jacomb took the surname of Hood, because the estate had been in the Hood family since the 1620s.^[4] Jacomb-Hood then demolished the Old Hall building around 1840, which he described in his memoirs as "too dilapidated for residence, and the situation was low, damp and unhealthy".^[6]

Jacomb-Hood was born on 25 January 1822 in Riseley, Bedfordshire.^[7] He attended Christ's Hospital, a public school^[b] in West Sussex. His father wanted him to pursue a career as a barrister, and at first he respected his father's wishes, choosing to study law.^[9] He was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge on 25 May 1840 and he began his degree the same year.^[7] He is listed in Alumni Cantabrigienses as a pensioner (full fee-paying student) and described to be of "of Bardon Park, Leics".^[7] However, after one year studying at Cambridge he changed his mind about obeying his father; he dropped out of his course in 1841 and chose to become a railway engineer instead.^[9]

In 1841, Jacomb-Hood became a student of the railway engineer George W. Buck, who at the time was the Chief Engineer of the Manchester and Birmingham Railway (M&BR) alongside Robert Stephenson. He was appointed by Buck as assistant to William Baker, who was responsible for a stretch of what would become the Crewe–Manchester line near Holmes Chapel. When the line reached Crewe in 1843, Jacomb-Hood was promoted, becoming the Chief Assistant to Buck, who by this time had stopped working for the M&BR directly and instead was practising privately.^[9]

During his time as Chief Assistant to Buck, Jacomb-Hood was tasked with projects including the rebuilding of the Salford Central bridges over New Bailey Road. He was then employed by the M&BR again, this time as part of their engineering staff. In this role, he was tasked with assisting in the construction of the Macclesfield branch, which now forms part of the Stafford–Manchester line. In 1844, he was promoted to Resident Engineer on the Manchester, South Junction and Altrincham Railway;^[9] (now the Altrincham Line, which is part of Manchester Metrolink).^[10] He kept this role for two years until 1846.^[9]

On 27 July 1846, the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway formed as an amalgamation of companies including the London and Brighton Railway and the London and Croydon Railway, and Jacomb-Hood was appointed as the company's Resident Engineer.^[11] In his first years at the company, his work mainly consisted of completing stations, managing contracts, and engineering the railway's new stations at London Bridge and Bricklayers Arms. He also designed and oversaw the construction of many branch lines, such as the Cuckoo Line, Epsom Downs Branch, and the Steyning Line. On 2 March 1847, Jacob-Hood was elected a Member of the Institution of Civil Engineers (MICE).^[9]

On 2 April 1850, Jacomb-Hood presented his paper titled Description of a Vertical Lift Bridge erected over the Grand Surrey Canal^[c] to the Institution of Civil Engineers; the paper details how he engineered the LB&SCR's swing bridge over the Grand Surrey Canal in London. The project, which ran between October 1848 and June 1849, had a total cost of £1300, which is equivalent to £165,000 in 2023.^[12][13] The paper later won him a Council Premium of Books, which he was awarded by the Institution of Civil Engineers the same year as the paper was published.^[9]

In the 1850s, the LB&SCR saw significant expansion; Jacomb-Hood was tasked with the construction of branch lines such as the Arun Valley line, the Oxted line,and the branch to Crystal Palace railway station. He was also working on the expansion of Brighton railway station as well as other heavy works.^[9] One of these projects was the construction of London Victoria railway station, which was to be the shared London terminus of the LB&SCR and the London, Chatham and Dover Railway (LC&DR). The station was built from two seemingly-unconnected buildings and financed equally by both railway companies.^[14] Jacomb-Hood was responsible for the design of the LB&SCR's half of the station; the station opened to passengers on 1 October 1860.^[15]

On 27 April 1858, Jacomb-Hood submitted a paper to the Institution of Civil engineers titled The Arrangement and Construction of Railway Stations. In this paper, Jacomb-Hood argued that despite the average British railway engineer having little architectural training, the design of stations should nonetheless be their professional responsibility. His concept of 'judicial arrangement' and station buildings being a major part of a railway engineer's work was highly innovative and unusual for the time.^[16] He was awarded a Telford Medal the same year by the Institution of Civil Engineering for his work on the paper.^[2]

In September 1860, Jacomb-Hood chose to resign as Resident Engineer due to the pressure of managing the parliamentary side of railway engineering. Instead, he chose to start practising privately as a civil engineer in Westminster, London.^[9] During his time in private practise, Jacomb-Hood worked on The Arun Valley line, South London line, and Cranleigh line among others. From 1860 to 1863, he worked with British architect Charles Driver on projects including the Dorking to Leatherhead line, and Portsmouth & Southsea and Tunbridge Wells railway stations.^[1]

In his early years of practising privately, he also collaborated with engineer George Parker Bidder on the construction of various projects.^[9] On 29 July 1864, the Horsham, Leatherhead and Dorking Railway was absorbed by the LB&SCR; the pair then finished the construction of the line together before it opened on 1 May 1867.^[17] The pair also worked on the Portsmouth line between Peckham Rye and Sutton railway stations;^[9] the works on the section had finished by June 1867.^[18] They also worked on plans for the East London Railway (now partially the East London line) and the Axminster and Lyme Regis Railway, among many others.^[9]

In 1865, a portrait of Jacomb-Hood was made by lithographer George B. Black; it is currently part of the National Portrait Gallery's collection.^[19] The same year, Jacomb-Hood entered into a partnership with his cousin and former student William Jacomb;^[9] the pair practised in Little George Street in the City of Westminster, and branded their partnership as 'Jacomb and Hood'.^[20] Together, they worked on projects across the United Kingdom, for example the Chichester and Midhurst Railway, which formed part of the Midhurst Railways, and the Bexleyheath line. The pair also undertook civil engineering projects outside of the railway industry, including the construction of the ironwork of the National Gallery building in London and the rebuilding of Portcreek Viaduct in Portsmouth.^[9]

In 1869, Jacomb-Hood became a director of the Crystal Palace Company;^[9] of its eight original board members, two were also board members of the LB&SCR.^[21][d] The partnership between him and William Jacomb was officially dissolved on 31 December 1969 by mutual consent;^[20] this was as a result of the latter being appointed as the new Resident Engineer of the London and South Western Railway, which was to be effective from the start of 1870. Jacomb served in this role until 1887.^[9][22]

In 1870, Jacomb-Hood joined the board of the Anglo-Maltese Hydraulic Dock Company.^[9] Based in Victoria Street, London, the company had constructed a dock in Malta which used a hydraulic system to lift boats out of the water and into a dry dock. The dock was finished in 1873 at a cost of £143,000, which is equivalent to £16,005,000 in 2023,^[13][23] and Jacomb-Hood was sent to Malta for him to assist in the company's affairs.^[9] He also took an active part in his role at the Crystal Palace Company, and was involved in the construction and management of the Crystal Palace Aquarium.^[9] The project, which was led by the aquarist William Alford Lloyd,^[24] involved building the first stand-alone aquarium outside of a zoo and by far the largest aquarium in the British Isles when it opened in 1871.^[25] However, it did not see financial success.^[24]

The Chairman of the LB&SCR, Samuel Laing, commissioned Jacomb-Hood to travel to Argentina and negotiate the purchase of the Central Northern Railway between Córdoba and Tucumán.^[9][26] The railway was eventually bought by the British-owned Córdoba Central Railway in 1887.^[26] His next project, in the United States, was the inspection of the Alabama and Chattanooga Railway; he was employed by Emile Erlanger & Co. to write a report on the viability of them purchasing it. It was as a result of this report that the Alabama Great Southern Railway Company was formed in 1877, and he served as a director of the company from its formation until 1886. In 1879, he resigned as a board member of the Crystal Palace Company; the same year, he was commissioned for a second time by Emile Erlanger & Co., this time to assist with the companies undertaking in the West Indies the United States.^[9]

In March 1883, Jacomb-Hood was invited to join the LB&SCR's board as a replacement for the retiring Sir Arthur Otway; through this, he restarted his direct connection with the railway which had been severed for twenty-three years. In the seventeen years between his appointment to the board and his death, he spent most of his time working on the LB&SCR's business.^[9] The c. 1895 painting Portrait of an Elderly Gentleman by Jacomb-Hood's son George Percy is believed to be a depiction of him. It is currently held in the archives of the National Railway Museum.^[27]

After 1880, Jacomb-Hood became involved in a large number of projects around the world.^[9] In 1876, the Thames Haven Petroleum Storage Company had begun building warehouses to store barrels of petroleum oil from the Thameshaven port. It began operating in 1880,^[28] with Jacomb-Hood as its director,^[9] and maintained a monopoly on the import of petroleum into London until 1900.^[28] He also acted as a director for several other projects including the New Gas Company, and the Sydney and Louisburg Railway.^[9] He also acted as the director of the Assam Railways and Trading Company,^[9] which was a British company that later became part of the Indian Dibru–Sadiya Railway. It was commissioned to build a line in modern-day Assam on 16 July 1883 and was closed on 12 December 2011.^[29]

Jacomb-Hood died suddenly in Tunbridge Wells on 10 May 1900; he was aged 78. At the time, he was still working for the LB&SCR, and was also one of the longest serving members of the Institution of Civil Engineers, having been elected over 53 years before his death.^[9]

On 25 November 1852,^[30] Jacomb-Hood married Jane Stothard Littlewood (1827–1869). She was the daughter of George Littlewood, who was a local printer. They had nine children together, of which two died in infancy. Their fourth child, George Percy Jacomb-Hood (6 July 1857 – 11 December 1929),^[4] was a successful painter and illustrator, and his work included depictions of his father.^[27][31]

Upon the death of his father in 1857, he inherited the family seat at Bardon Hall in Bardon, Leicestershire. In 1864, he sold the whole estate to William Percy Herrick of Beaumanor Hall.^[32] This made him the second and last member of his family to own the estate, as his father had inherited the hall from a distant cousin with no male heirs.^[3][32]

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