John Merry Porter

• Born : 1862 at Manchester
• Baptism : 3 October 1862 at Manchester Cathedral
• Marriage :  29 October 1891 to Catherine Hawksworth at Colwyn Bay
• Died : 22 July 1942
• Burial : 25 July 1842 at Colwyn Bay

John Merry Porter was born in Manchester and moved to Colwyn Bay, Denbighshire, when he was three years old. His father, John Porter, of Pwllycrochan, Denbighshire, was the agent for John Pender, a Manchester businessman and merchant with a warehouse in Mount Street who was concerned mainly with promoting transatlantic cables. John Porter converted the Pwllycrochan Mansion into a hotel, under a lease from Pender in 1866, and eventually bought it. It remained the property of the Porter family until 1938, when it was sold to Rydal School.

J. M. Porter was articled to James Farrar of Manchester, where he trained as an architect and civil engineer. After qualifying in 1886, he returned to Colwyn Bay and became a partner with Lawrence Booth and Thomas Chadwick, architects, surveyors and estate agents, who had formed their original partnership in 1876 to act as agents for the Colwyn Bay and Pwllycrochan Estate Company. Porter became the local agent. In 1905, the partnership was dissolved with John Merry Porter remaining in Colwyn Bay. It became Porter and Hunter 1905-1907, until Charles Ernest Elcock was taken into partnership. When Elcock left in 1912, the firm became J. M. Porter and Company, and kept this name until it was dissolved in 1973.

J. M. Porter married Catherine M. Hawksworth (1875-1935) in 1891. They had three children, Graham Hawksworth, who was killed in action in France, 1916; John Lawrence, who joined his father's practice and Catherine Margaret, who married Norman Milne Harrop of Garth Gynan, Llanfair Dyffryn Clywd. In 1973, the partners in J. M. Porter and Co., (John Lawrence Porter and Leonard Mosely) who had joined in 1920 and became partners in 1940, decided to retire and closed the business.

Address       
J. M. Porter and Co., estate agents, architects and surveyors, Estate Office 37 Conwy Road Colwyn Bay