Gallery of architectural work
Spencer House, west front
Spencer House, west front
Spencer House, north front
Spencer House, c.1800
John Vardy (February 1718 – 17 May 1765) was an English architect attached to the Royal Office of Works from 1736. He was a close follower of the neo-Palladian architect William Kent. [1]
John Vardy was born to a simple working family in Durham. His early training is obscure. His career at the Office of Works, which demanded most of his attention throughout his life, began in May 1736, when he was appointed Clerk of the Works at Greenwich Hospital. He was Clerk of the Works at Hampton Court Palace, January 1745 to 1746; Clerk of the Works at Whitehall, Palace of Westminster and St James's Palace, December 1746 to 1754; Kensington Palace, July 1754 to 1761. He also served as Clerk of the Works at Chelsea Hospital and as Surveyor to the Mint. [2]
His relations with William Kent, his senior at the Board of Works, began about 1736 and remained close. Vardy prepared for publication the classic of the Palladian revival, Some Designs of Mr. Inigo Jones and Mr. William Kent, 1744. He redrew and engraved Kent's drawing of the Great Hall at Hampton Court, and drew up Kent's ambitious designs for new Houses of Parliament, under Kent's direction. After Kent's death Vardy and Thomas Robinson saw Kent's Horse Guards, Whitehall, through to completion; Vardy published engravings of his redrawings of the plan and elevation.
Vardy's routine at the Office of Works constrained his time to devote to private clients. His london buildings have mostly suffered the fate of city constructions and have gone. His most prominent surviving work is Spencer House, St. James's, where, ironically the chief fame is garnered by the very early neoclassical interiors of the upper floor, by James "Athenian" Stuart.
For Joseph Damer, 1st Earl of Dorchester Vardy probably designed Dorchester House, Park Lane, London, begun in 1751-52. He exhibited designs for interiors at the Society of Artists, 1764. The house was demolished in 1849. [3]
Vardy's will mentions his brother Thomas Vardy, carver in Park Street, Grosvenor Square, and his son, John Vardy, Jr. who succeeded his father as Surveyor to the Royal Mint. He remodeled and extended Giacomo Leoni's Queensberry House in Burlington Gardens, for Henry Paget, 1st Earl of Uxbridge, in 1785-89; as Uxbridge House it survives, housing the Royal Bank of Scotland. [4]
His daughter Sarah married the sculptor Richard Westmacott (the elder). [5]
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Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington and 4th Earl of Cork, was an Anglo-Irish architect and noble often called the "Apollo of the Arts" and the "Architect Earl". The son of the 2nd Earl of Burlington and 3rd Earl of Cork, Burlington never took more than a passing interest in politics despite his position as a Privy Counsellor and a member of both the British House of Lords and the Irish House of Lords. His great interests in life were architecture and landscaping, and he is remembered for being a builder and a patron of architects, craftsmen and landscapers, Indeed, he is credited with bringing Palladian architecture to Britain and Ireland. His major projects include Burlington House, Westminster School, Chiswick House and Northwick Park.
William Kent was an eminent English architect, landscape architect, painter and furniture designer of the early 18th century. He began his career as a painter, and became Principal Painter in Ordinary or court painter, but his real talent was for design in various media.
Sir William Chambers was a Swedish-Scottish architect, based in London. Among his best-known works are Somerset House, and the pagoda at Kew. Chambers was a founder member of the Royal Academy.
Inigo Jones was the first significant architect in England and Wales in the early modern period, and the first to employ Vitruvian rules of proportion and symmetry in his buildings. As the most notable architect in England and Wales, Jones was the first person to introduce the classical architecture of Rome and the Italian Renaissance to Britain. He left his mark on London by his design of single buildings, such as the Queen's House which is the first building in England designed in a pure classical style, and the Banqueting House, Whitehall, as well as the layout for Covent Garden square which became a model for future developments in the West End. He made major contributions to stage design by his work as theatrical designer for several dozen masques, most by royal command and many in collaboration with Ben Jonson.
John James was a British architect particularly associated with Twickenham in west London, where he rebuilt St Mary's Church and also built a house for James Johnson, Secretary of State for Scotland, later Orleans House and since demolished. Howard Colvin's assessment of him was that of "a competent architect, but he lacked inventive fancy, and his buildings are for the most part plain and unadventurous in design".
Palladian architecture is a European architectural style derived from and inspired by the designs of the Venetian architect Andrea Palladio (1508–1580). What is recognised as Palladian architecture today is an evolution of his original concepts. Palladio's work was strongly based on the symmetry, perspective, and values of the formal classical temple architecture of the Ancient Greeks and Romans. From the 17th century Palladio's interpretation of this classical architecture was adapted as the style known as "Palladianism". It continued to develop until the end of the 18th century.
Giacomo Leoni, also known as James Leoni, was an Italian architect, born in Venice. He was a devotee of the work of Florentine Renaissance architect Leon Battista Alberti, who had also been an inspiration for Andrea Palladio. Leoni thus served as a prominent exponent of Palladianism in English architecture, beginning in earnest around 1720. Also loosely referred to as Georgian, this style is rooted in Italian Renaissance architecture.
Colen Campbell was a pioneering Scottish architect and architectural writer, credited as a founder of the Georgian style. For most of his career, he resided in Italy and England. As well as his architectural designs he is known for Vitruvius Britannicus, three volumes of high-quality engravings showing the great houses of the time.
Henry Flitcroft was a major English architect in the second generation of Palladianism. He came from a simple background: his father was a labourer in the gardens at Hampton Court and he began as a joiner by trade. Working as a carpenter at Burlington House, he fell from a scaffold and broke his leg. While he was recuperating, the young Lord Burlington noticed his talent with the pencil, and by 1720 Flitcroft was Burlington's draughtsman and general architectural assistant, surveying at Westminster School for Burlington's dormitory, and superintending at the site at Tottenham House. Working life in the inner circle that was driving the new Palladian architecture was an education for Flitcroft.
James Gibbs was one of Britain's most influential architects. Born in Scotland, he trained as an architect in Rome, and practised mainly in England. He is an important figure whose work spanned the transition between English Baroque architecture and Georgian architecture heavily influenced by Andrea Palladio. Among his most important works are St Martin-in-the-Fields, the cylindrical, domed Radcliffe Camera at Oxford University, and the Senate House at Cambridge University.
Thomas Ripley was an English architect.
Matthew Brettingham, sometimes called Matthew Brettingham the Elder, was an 18th-century Englishman who rose from humble origins to supervise the construction of Holkham Hall, and become one of the country's best-known architects of his generation. Much of his principal work has since been demolished, particularly his work in London, where he revolutionised the design of the grand townhouse. As a result, he is often overlooked today, remembered principally for his Palladian remodelling of numerous country houses, many of them situated in the East Anglia area of Britain. As Brettingham neared the pinnacle of his career, Palladianism began to fall out of fashion and neoclassicism was introduced, championed by the young Robert Adam.
Matthew Banckes was an eminent English master carpenter, who was Master Carpenter in the royal Office of Works from 1683 and Master of the Worshipful Company of Carpenters from 1698. Banckes worked under Sir Christopher Wren at numerous projects, including six of Wren's City Churches, for which he supplied the carpentry, and at Trinity College Library, Cambridge, where he produced the elaborately trussed flooring that supported the weighty collection of books.
Sir William Bruce of Kinross, 1st Baronet, was a Scottish gentleman-architect, "the effective founder of classical architecture in Scotland," as Howard Colvin observes. As a key figure in introducing the Palladian style into Scotland, he has been compared to the pioneering English architects Inigo Jones and Christopher Wren, and to the contemporaneous introducers of French style in English domestic architecture, Hugh May and Sir Roger Pratt.
James Smith was a Scottish architect, who pioneered the Palladian style in Scotland. He was described by Colen Campbell, in his Vitruvius Britannicus (1715–1725), as "the most experienced architect of that kingdom".
Isaac Ware was an English architect and translator of Italian Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio.
William Benson was a talented amateur architect and Whig politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1715 to 1719. In 1718, he arranged to displace the aged Sir Christopher Wren as Surveyor of the King's Works, a project in which he had the assistance of John Aislabie, according to Nicholas Hawksmoor, who was deprived of his double post to provide places for Benson's brother.
Roger Morris was an English architect whose connection with Colen Campbell brought him to the attention of Henry Herbert, 9th Earl of Pembroke, with whom Morris collaborated on a long series of projects.
Foots Cray Place was one of the four country houses built in England in the 18th century to a design inspired by Palladio's Villa Capra near Vicenza. Built in 1754 near Sidcup, Kent, Foots Cray Place was demolished in 1950 after a fire in 1949. Of the three other houses in England, Nuthall Temple in Nottinghamshire was built 1757 and demolished in 1929; the other two survive: Mereworth Castle and Chiswick House, both now Grade I listed buildings. A modern fifth example, Henbury Hall, was built near Macclesfield in the 1980s. Another example of a similar structure in England is the Temple of the Four Winds at Castle Howard, which is a garden building not a house.
William Dickinson was an English architect.
