(1711–86)
English architect, antiquary, astronomer (he was the first to explain the Milky Way), and landscape-designer. In 1748 he published Louthiana, or an Introduction to the Antiquities of Ireland, a pioneering work anticipating many C18 studies. He designed Nuthall Temple, Nottinghamshire (1754–7—demolished, but see Vitruvius Britannicus, iv (1767)), an elaborated version of Palladio's Villa Capra, Vincenza, and Scamozzi's Vettor Pisani villa, called Rocca Pisana (1575–8). His main claim to fame, however, is as a designer of remarkable garden-buildings, some of which are reproduced in his Six Original Designs of Arbours (1755) and Six Original Designs of Grottos (1758), intended as the first part of his projected Universal Architecture which, regrettably, was never completed. Many of his designs were for sham castles, Gothick follies, gateways, and eye-catchers, constructed of rubble and rough materials. He designed the primitive Doric ‘Shepherd's Grave’, a fabrique of elegiac character featuring a relief based on Poussin's painting Et in Arcadia Ego, at Shugborough, Staffs. (c.1756). Several Gothick garden-buildings at Tollymore Park, Co. Down (c.1740–80), Dundalk, Co. Louth (1746–7), and Belvedere House, Co. Westmeath, all in Ireland, were based on his drawings, many of which survive in the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, NYC. He was therefore among the earliest Gothic Revivalists.
Bibliography
- Colvin (1995)
- E.Harris (ed.) (1979)
- Journal of Garden History, i/1 (Jan.–Mar. 1981), 55–66
- M. McCarthy (1987)
The full bibliography for this book is available to download as a pdf file.
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