Archibald Matthias Dunn has been described as being amongst the foremost Catholic architects in the north-east of England during the Victorian era. Born in 1832 in Wylam, Northumberland, his father Matthias Dunn was a mining engineer and inspector in the region who worked with John Dobson drawing up an unsuccessful route for the railway from Newcastle to Dunbar.
Archibald’s education was a religious-based one, attending Ushaw College in County Durham and Stonyhurst College in Lancashire, before becoming an apprentice architect with Charles Francis Hansom in Bristol. Archibald went one to form a partnership with Hansom’s son, Edward Joseph Hansom opening a practice in Eldon Square, Newcastle in the 1850s. The practice, and Dunn himself, were responsible for a number of architectural designs in Northumberland and beyond often reflecting his Catholic upbringing. A small number of examples include St Andrew’s cemetery, Hexham (1858); Our Lady and St Wilifrid Roman Catholic Church, Blyth (1858); Mining Institute/Wood Memorial Hall, Newcastle (1868); and Castle Hill House, Wylam (1878) which Archibald kept as a private residence until it was sold in 1901. Archibald also provided designs for the tower and spire of St Mary’s Cathedral, Newcastle. The Dunn family made a number of bequests towards the Cathedral, William Dunn was Secretary to the Committee for the erection of St Mary’s Catholic Cathedral, Newcastle. The Dunn family are remembered in a number of the windows. Papers between William Dunn as Secretary and Augustus Welby Pugin (architect of the Cathedral) are amongst the Dunn family papers [NRO 02988].
Archibald was also a keen watercolourist, sketching whilst travelling in Europe with this wife, author, Sara Armstrong. In 1886 “Notes and Sketches of an Architect” was published. At Northumberland Archives amongst general family papers are two sketches that Archibald did; one an unidentified building viewed from Newcastle Road and another showing the planned interior for a ‘new Catholic Church and Presbytery, Gateshead’, possibly St Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church, Gateshead.
Despite retiring in 1897, Archibald continued designing including an unsuccessful design for Westminster Cathedral in 1906. Dunn “never sought professional qualification but was elected an honorary ARIBA in his retirement, which may be unique”. Archibald’s death in Bournemouth in January 1917 was reported locally in the ‘Newcastle Daily Chronicle’ and ‘Shields Daily News’; he was remembered as “an architect of national reputation particularly of ecclesiastical architecture” as well as a “charming companion”.