Francis Joseph Bigger (1863 – 9 December 1926) was an Irish antiquarian, revivalist, solicitor, architect, author, editor, Member of the Royal Irish Academy, and Fellow of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland. His collected library, now distributed across several public institutions, comprised more than 18,000 books, journals, letters, photographs, sketches, maps, and other materials. His house in Belfast was a gathering place for Irish nationalist politicians, artists, scholars, and others. He was a prolific sponsor and promoter of Gaelic culture, authored many works of his own, founded (or co-founded) several institutions, and revived and edited the Ulster Journal of Archaeology. Namesake confusion The Belfast politician Joseph Biggar changed the spelling of his surname from Bigger to Biggar (when he converted to Catholicism), which caused people some confusion in the spelling of Francis Joseph Bigger's surname. Life Bigger was born in 1863, in Belfast on Little Donegall Street. He was educated at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution, one of whose original governors at its foundation in 1810 was his grandfather David Bigger, and one of whose governors during his education there was his father. Bigger joined the Belfast Naturalists' Field Club, and was later its secretary and its president. He became a solicitor in 1888, and was also a Freemason. He also helped to organize the Glens Feis, a feis at Cushendall, out of a desire to promote Gaelic culture that also saw him join, and become a member of the executive committee of, the Gaelic League. With the support of the veteran Irish-language revivalist Robert Shipboy MacAdam, who had founded and edited the publication's original series (1853-1862), in 1894 Bigger revived the Ulster Journal of Archaeology and he was to edit it until 1914. His active interest in archeology is still recalled by archeologists a century later, with sites that he had dug being known informally as "well and truly Biggered". In 1911, Bigger bought Jordan's Castle in Ardglass which he restored, and bequeathed to the state. As an architect, Bigger wrote a complaint to the Irish Independent, published on 2 March 1907, about plans for some cottages, in response to which the Independent invited him to present his own plans. He drew these up and the Independent published them as Labourers' Cottages for Ireland . Writer Jonathan Bell characterized these as the plans of an "eccentric antiquarian", as they deliberately excluded sinks from the design, Bigger claiming that