Percy Shepherd

Percy Shepherd OBE (8 August 1878 – March 1948) was an eminent British military and civil engineer specialising in docks, waterways, harbour works, and drainage.

Early career Percy Shepherd was born in Romford, Essex on 8 August 1878 but was brought up in the north of England. He attended school at The College, Buxton, Derbyshire from 1891 to 1894, and on leaving school spent a year in the millwright's department of Armstrong Whitworth & Co. of Manchester. He then served a four-year pupilage with Berkeley Deane Wise, Chief Engineer to the Belfast and Northern Counties Railway, in Belfast from 1895 until 1899. During his pupilage he was engaged in work for the Belfast and Northern Counties Railway, including the re-arrangement of York Street Station and the erection of the new railway hotel, the Northern Counties Hotel. Then he worked for ten years as an assistant to W.B. Worthington on the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway, before setting up in independent practice in Manchester around 1909 when he around 31 years old.

Personal life Percy lived with his wife in Bangor, Northern Ireland in a house built in 1924 and designed by RI Smith and T. F. O. Rippingham, which was controversially demolished in 2008. He had one son, Lambert Charles Shepherd, who attended Shrewsbury School and Jesus College, Cambridge, and won the Ladies' Challenge Plate at Henley Royal Regatta, but who unfortunately was killed in World War II while serving in the Royal Navy on . Percy Shepherd established a scholarship at Jesus College in memory of his son.

Further information Institution of Civil Engineers Northern Ireland "Notice" Issue 10 Spring 2009