HENEKER, Richard William (1823-1912) was the business partner of Frederick Lawford, a leading architect in the mid-19th C. in Montreal, Quebec. Born in Dublin, Ireland on 2 May 1823, he was educated at University College School in London, and by private tuition, and studied architecture and surveying. In 1842, at the age of 19 years, he joined the office of Sir Charles Barry in London to assist him with the preparation and production of drawings of the winning design for new Houses of Parliament at Westminster in central London (built 1840-52). Barry was the most important architect active in London in the early Victorian era, and Heneker’s training with Barry proved invaluable. Heneker worked directly under Barry, and with other young architects in that office including the brilliant Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin, and with a Belgian-born architect named Frederick Lawford. The association with Lawford as a friend and co-worker in the Barry office proved to be fortuitous, and would later lead to a successful business partnership in London, and set the stage for the Canadian career of both Heneker and Lawford. Heneker was elected as an associate member of the Royal Institute of British Architects on 21 February 1848, and soon after, in 1849 or 1850, both Heneker and Lawford decided to leave the office of Charles Barry and form their own partnership and open a new office in London (see list of works under Lawford & Heneker).
Together, their practise appears to have been successful, and they completed commercial and ecclesiastical commissions in London and elsewhere, and won a major architectural competition in 1853 for a new civic building in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. By 1855 however, Heneker had been persuaded to emigrate to Canada, and it is likely that he invited his business partner Lawford to join him in Montreal later that same year. It is unclear what prompted Heneker to abandon the profession of architecture after his arrival in Canada in 1855. Unlike his partner Frederick Lawford, who became a highly successful architect in Montreal, Heneker accepted the offer to become Commissioner of the British American Land Co., located in Sherbrooke, in late 1855 and held that post for nearly 50 years until his retirement in 1901. He resigned his membership in the R.I.B.A. in 1856, but continued to give public presentations on the profession of architecture as late as 1857. A lengthy summary of his lecture on architecture to the Library Association & Mechanics Institute in Sherbrooke was published in the Sherbrooke Gazette, 4 April 1857, 2.
In 1858 Heneker became a trustee of Bishop’s College in Sherbrooke, and was later appointed Chancellor of the college in 1878. In 1859, he assisted with the establishment of the Eastern Townships Bank, and was President of that bank for many years. He served two terms as mayor of Sherbrooke, the first in 1868, and again in 1877, and was one of the founders of the Sherbrooke Protestant Hospital in 1888. Heneker also received an honorary degree of LL.D. from McGill University in Montreal in 1878. Heneker left Canada in 1902 and took up residence in Bournemouth, England. He later died there on 15 August 1912 (obituary with port. Daily Record [Sherbrooke], 19 Aug. 1912, 1 and 8; biog. in H. Morgan, Canadian Men & Women of the Time, 1912, 526; biog. and port. in the Sherbrooke Hospital Annual Report, 1971, 1-2; biog. Royal Inst. of British Architects, Directory of British Architects [London], 2001, Vol. 1, 890). A painted oil portrait of Heneker is on permanent display at Bishop’s University in Lennoxville, Quebec; A biography and photographic portrait of Heneker was published in the Montreal Daily Star, 20 Sept. 1910, p. 10.