Background
Edmund Beckett was born at Carlton Hall Nottinghamshire, England, and was the eldest son of Sir Edmund Beckett, 4th Baronet, MP for the West Riding of Yorkshire.
The grave of Lord Grimthorpe outside St Albans Cathedral
"Bells" Baron Grimthorpe as caricatured by Spy (Leslie Ward) in Vanity Fair, February 1889
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Edmund Beckett was born at Carlton Hall Nottinghamshire, England, and was the eldest son of Sir Edmund Beckett, 4th Baronet, MP for the West Riding of Yorkshire.
He was educated at Doncaster Grammar School for Boys (briefly), then Eton, and went on to read mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated in the 1838 Tripos with the rank of "30th Wrangler".
Beckett began practising law in 1841 at Lincoln's Inn. He was made a Queen's Counsel in 1854, retiring in 1881. He was elected to the Royal Astronomical Society in 1866. He was elected to the presidency of the British Horological Institute in 1868, a position he accepted on the condition that he should not be asked to attend dinners. He was re-elected annually until his death.
In 1877 he was appointed Chancellor and Vicar-General of the Diocese of York. He was created Baron Grimthorpe in 1886.
In 1851, he designed the mechanism for the clock of the Palace of Westminster (the Houses of Parliament in London), responsible for the chimes of Big Ben. When the differing plans for the proposed clock of the Victoria Tower on the Houses of Parliament were submitted in 1851, Beckett was asked to act with the Astronomer Royal as referee. He helped design the final plans for this four-dialed clock, which was set in operation in 1860.
In 1868 he worked with W. H. Crossland to design St Chad's Church, Far Headingley in Leeds on land given by his family.
He was also responsible throughout the 1880s and 1890s for rebuilding the west front, roof, and transept windows of St Albans Cathedral at his own expense. Although the building had been in need of repair, popular opinion at the time held that he had changed the cathedral's character, even inspiring the creation and temporary popularity of the verb "to grimthorpe", meaning to carry out unsympathetic restorations of ancient buildings. Part of Beckett's additions included statues of the four evangelists around the western door, the statue of St Matthew has Beckett's face. He later turned his attentions to St Peter's and then to St Michael's churches, both in the same city. He lived at Batchwood Hall from where he oversaw the restoration work on the cathedral.
He died on 29 April 1905 after a fall, and is buried in the grounds of St Albans Cathedral.
Quotations: I am the only architect with whom I have never quarrelled.
He married Fanny Catherine (23 February 1823 - 8 December 1901), daughter of John Lonsdale, 89th Bishop of Lichfield.