Fuller, James Franklin (1835–1924), architect, novelist, and antiquary, was born at Nedanone, near Derryquin, Co. Kerry, the only son among three children of Thomas Harnett Fuller (d. 1886), landowner, and his wife Frances Diana (d. 1872), daughter of Francis Bland, DL, of Derryquin Castle. The family moved first to Reenaferrera and then to Glashnacree, Co. Kerry, which Fuller inherited on his father's death. When not in sporting mode, in pursuit of fur, fish, and feather, Fuller was tutored by James Murphy (1826–1901), who in 1883 conducted the crown case in the trials for the Phoenix Park murders. He next went to a boarding school at Blackrock, Cork, where he became friends with Thomas Newenham Deane (qv), later a distinguished architect. Fuller was briefly an actor, then became an articled pupil in a firm of London architects before working for the distinguished Manchester architect Alfred Waterhouse. From the early 1850s he contributed literary work to drawing-room periodicals such as Truth, Dark Blue, and Once a Week. He established the 2nd Manchester Regiment of Volunteers, drawn from Irishmen living locally. He moved to Sheffield before returning to London by early 1860, and joined Volunteer regiments in both cities.
In 1862 he was appointed architect to the Irish ecclesiastical commissioners, and was active in building and renovating churches and associated properties all over Ireland. On the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland (1869), Fuller took a lump sum in compensation for the loss of his post, and set up practice in Dublin. His first commission (1870) was the restoration of Annamoe House, Co. Sligo, for Charles O'Hara. He was elected FRIBA in 1872. He soon got work from the newly established church representative body, and his connection with this organisation was maintained for over forty years. Among his early commissions were new churches at Durrow, Co. Meath, Rattoo, Co. Kerry, and Syddan, Co. Meath, all between 1878 and 1880. He became a leading ecclesiastical restoration architect, carrying out important works at the cathedrals of Killaloe (1887), Kildare (1890), and Clonfert (1896). Some twenty-seven Fuller commissions are detailed in the Irish Builder (1870–1904), including the new town hall, Dalkey, Co. Dublin (1872), the Coombe lying-in hospital, Dublin (1877), and several new schools in the Dublin area. He was the leading architect of country houses of his day; among those he restored were Kylemore Castle, Letterfrack, Co. Galway; Ashford Castle, Cong, Co. Mayo; and Tinakilly House, Co. Wicklow. He rebuilt the Bishop's House in Parknasilla, Co. Kerry, latterly the Great Southern Hotel, and was also responsible for major changes to Farmleigh House, beside the Phoenix Park, Dublin, between 1881 and 1884. He was architect to the benchers of the King's Inns and to the national board of education, and was elected FRIAI, FSA, and MRIA (1915).
He published, under the pseudonym ‘Ignotus’, the novel Culmshire folk (3 vols, 1873), favourably compared by the Scotsman to George Eliot's work; the strongest part of his writing was dialogue and character observation. Lady Culmshire's plan to restore a church allowed Fuller not only to effuse about its Gothic splendour, but also to trace the history of the church's patron saint. His next literary effort was John Orlebar (n.d.), followed by Billy; or, The young idea (1884), a humorous tale of a town boy's farmhouse Christmas, and Chronicles of Westerly (which first appeared in Blackwood's) and Doctor Quodlibet (n.d.), a novelette. He also used the pseudonym ‘An old boy’.
Fuller was greatly interested in local history, genealogy, and heraldry, and published twenty-one papers in the Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society (1900–24), chiefly on seventeenth-century local history, but also including ‘The Tones: father and son’ (1924). He published thirteen papers in the Kerry Archaeological Magazine between March 1914 and July 1920 on distinguished Kerrymen and Kerry families. His family history of the Welsh novelist Anna Maria Evans was published as A curious genealogical medley (1913), and he regularly contributed to journals such as the Genealogist.
Fuller's autobiography Omniana (1916), ‘the memoir of an octogenarian schoolboy’, is a rambling but engaging recollection of a varied life, in which he noted, for example, that he regretted having had to destroy the architectural identity of a fine house in Stillorgan, Co. Dublin, built by James Cavanah Murphy (qv), to cater for the ‘flamboyant needs’ of his client Richard ‘Boss’ Croker (qv), (Omniana, 32). The 1916 edition of Omniana includes portraits of Fuller, at 55 and 80. He died 8 December 1924 at his residence, 51 Eglinton Road, Donnybrook, Dublin, and was buried in Mount Jerome cemetery, Dublin.
Fuller married (1860) Helen Prospére, daughter of J. P. Gouvion and granddaughter of the marquis St Cyr Gouvion (one of Napoleon's generals and a marshal of France). He was survived by his wife, son, and daughter; a son and two daughters died before him.