Background
James Wyatt was born at Blackbrook Farm, Weeford, Staffordshire, England, United Kingdom on the 3rd of August 1746.
He was the sixth son of Benjamin Wyatt, a farmer, timber merchant and builder.
James Wyatt was born at Blackbrook Farm, Weeford, Staffordshire, England, United Kingdom on the 3rd of August 1746.
He was the sixth son of Benjamin Wyatt, a farmer, timber merchant and builder.
At the age of fourteen his taste for drawing attracted the attention of Lord Bagot, newly appointed ambassador to the pope, who took him with him to Rome, where he spent five or six years in studying architecture.
He spent six years in Italy from 1762 before returning to England where he worked for the family firm, mostly with his brother Samuel.
In 1776 he was made surveyor of Westminster Abbey, and in 1778 and the Architect to the Board of Ordnance (1782), and Surveyor-General and Comptroller of the Office of Works (1796), designed or altered several Royal residences, and carried out many other commissions, including well over 100 country-houses.
During this earlier period Wyatt shared the prevailing contempt for Gothic architecture; thus the New Buildings at Magdalen College, Oxford, designed by him, formed part of a scheme, the plans for which are extant, which involved the demolition of the famous medieval quadrangle and cloisters.
He evolved an elegant Neo-Classicism, possibly derived not only from his time in Italy, but from studies of the work of Adam at Kedleston, Derbys.
Indeed his first architecturally significant house was Heaton Hall, Lancs.
(c. 1772–8), loosely based on a simplified and refined version of Paine's designs for Kedleston, complete with a central bow.
He made his name, however, with The Pantheon, Oxford Street, London (1769–72—with Samuel), a Neo-Classical domed assembly-room given the imprimatur of that arbiter of taste, Horace Walpole, who declared it the ‘most beautiful edifice in England’.
However, his interventions with medieval buildings were not universally admired, and he made drastic, even irresponsible, and certainly controversial alterations to five cathedrals (his work at Salisbury, Wilts.
(1789–92), and Hereford (1786–96) earned him the nickname ‘The Destroyer’, as his approach to medieval fabric was cavalier, speculative, and unarchaeological, and at Durham Cathedral his proposals to demolish the Galilee and commit other acts of vandalism roused ferocious opposition led by John Carter.
His Radcliffe Observatory, Oxford (1776–94), drew on the Tower of the Winds in Athens (c. 50 BC) for its inspiration, and he completed the interior of Sir Robert Taylor's Heveningham Hall, Suffolk (c. 1780–4), in an elegant Neo-Classical style (damaged in the 19806).
His finest houses are Heaton Hall (mentioned above), Castle Coole, Co.
Fermanagh, Northern Ireland (1790–7—with an elliptical saloon expressed as a bow on one of the fronts), and the severe Dodington Park, Glos.
(1798–1813).
Two of his best designs were for mausolea: that for the 4th Earl of Darnley at Cobham, Kent (c. 1783–4—in ruins), was a noble and severe Neo-Classical work, while that for the 16t Earl of Yarborough at Brocklesby Park, Lincs.
Ashridge Park, Herts.
(1802–13), and the additions to Wilton House, Wiltshire, including the cloister (1801–11), were also Gothic.
One room for his Gothic Lee Priory, Ickham, Kent (c. 1785–90—demolished), survives in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.
He provided plans for the Earl-Bishop of Derry's great house, Downhill, Co.
Londonderry, Northern Ireland (built c. 1776–9 under Shanahan's direction now in ruins), and remodelled Belvoir Castle, Leics.
Particularly felicitous are those of Heaton Hall, near Manchester, and the enchanting Brocklesby Mausoleum, Lincs.
He died 2 miles east of Marlborough in carriage accident.