Ohitiiary—TJwmas Mcllard Reade. ;333 



THOMAS MELLARD READE, F.G.S., 



Assoc. M. Inst. C.E., F.ll.I.B.A. 



Born May 27, 1S32. Died May 26, 1909. 



Mk. Mellakd Reade was the younger son of William James Eeade 

 and Maiy Mellard (of Newcastle-under-Lyme). His father, who was 

 a man of high character and studious habits, but not successful from 

 a worldly point of view, had in 1830 opened a school in Mill Street, 

 Liverpool, and there Thomas Mellard Eeade was born in 1832. 

 Descended on the father's side from a family of Staffordshire yeomen, 

 of whom the head member settled in Cheshire in 1730, there were 

 among his kinsmen Sir Thomas Reade, Deputy Adjutant-General at 

 St. Helena during Napoleon's captivity, and the Rev. Joseph Bancroft 

 Reade, a pioneer in photography who was elected a Fellow of the 

 Royal Society in 1838. On his mother's side he was a cousin of 

 Mrs. Craik, authoress of John Halifax, Gentleman. 



After receiving his elementary education in private schools at 

 Liverpool and at Seacombe in Cheshire, j\Iellard Reade about the end 

 of 1844, before he was 13 years of age, became a pupil in the office of 

 Messrs. Eyes and Son, arcliitects and surveyors, at Liverpool. In their 

 office, and subsequently as a draughtsman in that of another local 

 architect, Mr. H. Horner, he laboured diligently for a period of eight 

 years. Early in 1853 he entered the service of the London and IS^orth- 

 "VVestern Railway at Warrington, becoming in due course principal 

 draughtsman in th'e northern division of the Company's civil engineering 

 department. 



The knowledge and experience he had thus acquired during fifteen 

 years enabled him in 1860 to commence private practice in Liverpool 

 as an architect and civil engineer, and in this he was eminently 

 successful. Among many works he laid out the residential estate of 

 Blundellsands in 1865, fixing his own home there in 1868, after 

 having married in 1866 the widow of Mr. Alfred Taylor, C.E. 

 Appointed architect to the Liverpool School Board in 1870, he retained 

 the office until 1902, having designed and superintended the erection 

 and enlargement of many schools. He also carried out much other 

 ai'chitectural and engineering work. In 1871 he was elected an 

 Associate Member of the Institntion of Civil Engineers and in 1878 

 a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects.' 



Although from boyhood he had been interested in science, and 

 especially in geology, it was not until he was about 35 years of age 

 that he began to give special attention to the subject. In 1870 he 

 commenced the long series of geological articles which he communicated 

 to scientific societies and journals, and in 1872 he was elected a Fellow 

 of the Geological Society. His first important paper was on "The 

 Geology and Physics of the Post-Glacial Period, as shown in the 

 deposits and organic remains in Lancashire and Cheshire ". This 



1 For most of the above particulars and for the supplementary list of his father's 

 geological papers we are indebted to Mr. Aleyn Lyell Eeade, author of The Bcadts of 

 Blackwood Mill. 



