Charles Robert Cockerell

One of the most gifted and scholarly architects working in England within the Classical tradition in C19, his work was at once bold yet fastidious, thoroughly based on archaeologically proven precedents yet free from dull pedantry, and full of refinements yet achieving a noble monumentality. Born in London, he was the son of S. P. Cockerell, with whom he trained before moving to Robert Smirke's office in 1809. He travelled with John Foster to Athens, where they met the German archaeologists Haller and Jakob Linckh (1786–1841), and together they discovered the Aegina marbles (now in Munich) in 1811, studied the temple of Apollo Epicurius at Bassae in Arcadia (in particular the Bassae Order of Ionic), and found the Phigaleian marbles. With Haller, Cockerell observed the entasis on Greek column-shafts (see Allason; Pennethorne; Penrose). In 1811–16 he visited several sites in Asia Minor, the Peloponnesos and the Archipelago, Rome, and Florence before returning to London where he set up his own practice in 1817.

In 1819 he succeeded his father to the Surveyorship of St Paul's Cathedral. Receptive to the work of Wren, he was an early admirer of the compositions of Hawksmoor and Vanbrugh. His designs were an eclectic mix of Greek Revival, Renaissance, and Baroque, with a refinement of detail acquired from his archaeological research. A splendid example of his work is the Ashmolean Museum and Taylorian Institution, Oxford (1841–5), where the Bassae Order is much in evidence but the columns stand forward of the façade in the manner of a Roman triumphal arch, while the Italian Renaissance influences are strong, notably in the robust cornice.

In 1833 Cockerell succeeded Soane as Architect to the Bank of England. He designed much distinguished work, including the branches of the Bank in Bristol (1844–6) and Liverpool (1844–7), where Greek, Roman, and Renaissance features were confidently and intelligently used. He also designed the University Library, Cambridge (1837–40), where the Bassae Order was again incorporated, in conjunction with a coffered barrel-vault. Cockerell completed the interiors of both the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (1845–7), after Basevi's death, and St George's Hall, Liverpool (1851–64), after the death of Elmes.

Cockerell was elected to the Royal Academy in 1829, and became Professor of Architecture there in 1840. Awarded the Gold Medal of the RIBA (1840), he was the Institute's first professional President in 1860, and he was honoured by French and many other European academies. His works included Antiquities of Athens and other Places of Greece, Sicily, etc. (1830), a supplementary volume to Stuart and Revett's The Antiquities of Athens; The Temple of Jupiter Olympius at Agrigentum (1830); works on William of Wykeham's contributions to Winchester Cathedral (1845), on the sculptures at Lincoln Cathedral (1848), on the west front of Wells Cathedral (1851 and 1862), and on colour in Antique architecture (1859); The Temples of Jupiter Panhellenius at Aegina and of Apollo Epicurius at Bassae (1860); and the diary of his travels, published as Travels in Southern Europe and the Levant 1810–1817 (1903).

Bibliography

• Cockerell (1830, 1860)
• Colvin (1995)
• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004)
• Placzek (ed.) (1982)
• Jane Turner (1996)
• Watkin (1974)

The full bibliography for this book is available to download as a pdf file.
Download the bibliography for A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (PDF: 1.2MB)

Charles Robert Cockerell (portrait by Ingres, 1817)

The main entrance to the Fitzwilliam Museum.

Charles Robert Cockerell (1788–1863) was an English architect, archaeologist, and writer. Early in his life, he trained in the architectural practice of his father, Samuel Pepys Cockerell. One of his earliest jobs found Cockerell assisting Robert Smirke in rebuilding the Covent Garden Theatre (a forerunner of today's Royal Opera House). He set up his own practice in 1817 and became relatively successful, winning the first Royal Gold Medal for architecture in 1848 and becoming president of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1860.

As an archaeologist, Cockerell is remembered for removing the reliefs from the temple of Apollo at Bassae, near Phigalia, which are now in the British Museum. Replicas of these reliefs were included in the frieze of the library of the Travellers Club, of which Charles Robert Cockerell was a founding committee member in 1819.

With Jacques Ignace Hittorff and Thomas Leverton Donaldson, Cockerell was also a member of the committee formed in 1836 to determine whether the Elgin Marbles and other Greek statuary in the British Museum had originally been coloured (see Transactions of the Royal Institute of British Architects for 1842).

The Royal Academy of Arts composed a brief commemorative biography of Cockerell, including the following sentiment which speaks to his great work as a student of architecture:

"At the heart of Cockerell's emotional experience of the power of the antique to fire the imagination lay an extraordinary visual sensitivity to the mass and volume of the components of architecture, which for him were never mere abstract, weightless forms or quotations borrowed from the past, but acted together as a constantly renewable expression of man's innate need to create beauty on earth."

His second son Frederick Pepys Cockerell also became an architect.

Notable buildings

The St David's Building at the University of Wales, Lampeter

• 1822-1827 - The Saint David's Building, University of Wales, Lampeter.
• 1824-1829 - The National Monument, Edinburgh.
• 1829 - Church of Holy Trinity, Hotwells, Bristol ^[1].
• 1835 - The Bank of England, Courtney Street, Plymouth.
• 1838 - London & Westminster Bank, Lothbury, London (with William Tite).
• 1839-1845 - The Ashmolean Museum and Taylor Institution, Oxford University.
• 1844-1847 - The Bank of England, Bristol ^[2].
• 1845 - The Bank of England, King Street, Manchester.
• 1845-1848 - Bank of England, Liverpool.
• 1848 - Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge University.
• 1851-1854 - The Bank of England, Castle Street, Liverpool.
• 1854 - St. George’s Hall, Liverpool.

References

1. ^ Walter Ison (1978). The Georgian buildings of Bristol. Kingsmead Press. pp. 88–89. ISBN 0901571881. 
2. ^ Walter Ison (1978). The Georgian buildings of Bristol. Kingsmead Press. p. 33. ISBN 0901571881. 

External links

• http://www.racollection.org.uk/ixbin/hixclient.exe?submit-button=search&search-form=artist/artist_month_may2005.html&_IXSESSION_=F1tc7cZXMh7
• http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/speel/arch/cockerel.htm
• http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/people/A0812735.html
• Cockerell and the Grand Tour
• (German) Antiquities of Athens and other places in Greece Sicily etc (London 1839). German edition Die Alterthümer von Athen from 1833, online at the University of Heidelberg
• Archival material relating to Charles Robert Cockerell listed at the UK National Register of Archives

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