John Nash (architect)
John Nash was an English architect of the Georgian and Regency eras. He was responsible for the design, in the neoclassical and picturesque styles, of many important areas of London. His designs were financed by the Prince Regent and by the era's most successful property developer, James Burton. Nash also collaborated extensively with Burton's son, Decimus Burton.
Nash's best-known solo designs are the Royal Pavilion, Brighton; Marble Arch; and Buckingham Palace. His best-known collaboration with James Burton is Regent Street and his best-known collaborations with Decimus Burton are Regent's Park and its terraces and Carlton House Terrace. The majority of his buildings, including those that the Burtons did not contribute to, were built by James Burton's company.
Background and early career
John Nash was born in 1752, probably in Lambeth, south London. His father was a millwright also called John. From 1766 or 1767, Nash trained with the architect Sir Robert Taylor. The apprenticeship was completed in 1775 or 1776.File:Cronkhill Villa Cropped.jpg|thumb|right|Cronkhill, Shropshire – one of Nash's earlier buildings and the first "Italianate villa in England"
On 28 April 1775, at the now-demolished church of St Mary Newington, Nash married his first wife Jane Elizabeth Kerr, daughter of a surgeon. Initially, he seems to have pursued a career as a surveyor, builder and carpenter. This gave him an income of around £300 a year. The couple set up home at Royal Row, Lambeth.
He established his own architectural practice in 1777 as well as being in partnership with a timber merchant, Richard Heaviside. The couple had two children, both were baptised at St Mary-at-Lambeth, John on 9 June 1776 and Hugh on 28 April 1778.
In June 1778, Nash, "by the ill conduct of his wife found it necessary to send her into Wales in order to work a reformation on her." The cause of this appears to have been the claim that Jane Nash, "had imposed two spurious children on him as his and her own, notwithstanding she had then never had any child", and she had contracted several debts unknown to her husband, including one for milliners' bills of £300. The claim that Jane had faked her pregnancies and then passed babies she had acquired off as her own was brought before the Consistory court of the Bishop of London. His wife was sent to Aberavon to lodge with Nash's cousin, Ann Morgan, but she developed a relationship with a local man, Charles Charles. In an attempt at reconciliation, Jane returned to London in June 1779, but she continued to act extravagantly so he sent her to another cousin, Thomas Edwards of Neath. She gave birth just after Christmas and acknowledged Charles Charles as the father. In 1781, Nash instigated action against Jane for separation on grounds of adultery. The case was tried at Hereford in 1782. Charles, who was found guilty, was unable to pay the damages of £76 and subsequently died in prison. The divorce was finally read 26 January 1787.
His career was initially unsuccessful and short-lived. After inheriting £1000 in 1778 from his uncle Thomas, he invested the money in his first independent works, 15–17 Bloomsbury Square and 66–71 Great Russell Street in Bloomsbury. However, the property failed to let and he was declared bankrupt on 30 September 1783. His debts were £5000, including £2000 he had been lent by Robert Adam and his brothers. A blue plaque commemorating Nash was placed on 66 Great Russell Street by English Heritage in 2013.
Nash's early career demonstrates his dual capacity as architect and engineer. According to architectural historian John Summerson, Nash was "the last English architect to consider himself not only an architect but an engineer".
Wales
Nash left London in 1784 to live in Carmarthen, Wales, where his mother had retired. In 1785, he and a local man, Samuel Simon Saxon, re-roofed the town's church for 600 guineas. Nash and Saxon seem to have worked as building contractors and suppliers of building materials. Nash's London buildings had been standard Georgian terraced houses.In Wales, he matured as an architect. His first major work in the area was the first of three prisons he would design, Carmarthen 1789–92. This was planned by the penal reformer John Howard and Nash developed this into the finished building. He went on to design the prisons at Cardigan and Hereford. It was at Hereford that Nash met Richard Payne Knight, whose theories on the picturesque as applied to architecture and landscape would influence Nash. The commission for Hereford Gaol came after the death of William Blackburn, who was to have designed the building. Nash's design was accepted after James Wyatt approved of the design.
In 1789, St Davids Cathedral was suffering from structural problems. Its west front was leaning forward by one foot, and Nash was hired to survey the structure and develop a plan to save the building. His solution, completed in 1791, was to demolish the upper part of the façade and rebuild it with two large but inelegant flying buttresses. In 1790, Nash met Uvedale Price, of Downtown Castle, whose theories of the Picturesque would influence Nash's town planning. Price commissioned Nash to design Castle House Aberystwyth. Its plan took the form of a right-angled triangle, with an octagonal tower at each corner, sited on the very edge of the sea.
One of Nash's most important developments were a series of medium-sized country houses that he designed in Wales, which developed the villa designs of his teacher Sir Robert Taylor. Most of these villas consist of a roughly square plan with a small entrance hall and a staircase offset in the middle to one side, around which are placed the main rooms. There is then a less prominent servants' quarters in a wing attached to one side of the villa. The buildings are usually only two floors in height and the elevations of the main block are usually symmetrical. One of the finest of these villas is Llanerchaeron, but at least a dozen villas were designed throughout south Wales. Others, in Pembrokeshire, include Ffynone, built for the Colby family at Boncath, near Manordeifi, and Foley House, built for the lawyer Richard Foley at Goat Street in Haverfordwest.
From 1796, Nash spent most of his time working in London; this was a prelude to his return to the capital in 1797. At this time, Nash designed the delicate Gothic Revival gateway to Clytha Park near Abergavenny in Monmouthshire, and also his alterations in Gothic Revival style in 1794 to Hafod Uchtryd for Thomas Johnes at Devil's Bridge, Cardiganshire. Also in c. 1794–95 he advised on the paving, lighting and water supply in Abergavenny and designed an elegant market building. Other work included Whitson Court, near Newport. After his return to London, Nash continued to design houses in Wales including Harpton Court in Radnorshire, which was demolished, apart from the service wing, in 1956. In 1807 he drew up plans for the re-building of Hawarden Castle with Gothic battlements and towers, but the plan appears to have been modified by another architect when it was carried out. In about 1808, he designed Monachty, near Aberaeron, and later drew up plans for work at Nanteos.
He met Humphry Repton at Stoke Edith in 1792 and formed a successful partnership with the landscape garden designer. One of their early commissions was at Corsham Court in 1795–96. The pair would collaborate to carefully place the Nash-designed building in grounds designed by Repton. The partnership ended in 1800 under recriminations, Repton accusing Nash of exploiting their partnership to his own advantage. As Nash developed his architectural practice, it became necessary to employ draughtsmen; the first in the early 1790s was Augustus Charles Pugin, and later in 1795, John Adey Repton, son of Humphry.
Return to London
In June 1797, Nash moved into 28 Dover Street, a building of his own design. He built a larger house next door at 29, into which he moved the following year. Nash married 25-year-old Mary Anne Bradley on 17 December 1798 at St George's, Hanover Square. In 1798, he purchased a plot of land of at East Cowes on which he erected 1798–1802 East Cowes Castle as his residence. It was the first of a series of picturesque Gothic castles that he would design.Nash's final home in London was 14 Regent Street which he designed and built 1819–23. Number 16 was built at the same time for the home of Nash's cousin John Edwards, a lawyer who handled all of Nash's legal affairs. Located in lower Regent Street, near Waterloo Place, both houses formed a single design around an open courtyard. Nash's drawing office was on the ground floor, and on the first floor was the finest room in the house, the long picture and sculpture gallery; it linked the drawing room at the front of the building with the dining room at the rear. The house was sold in 1834, and the gallery interior moved to East Cowes Castle.
The finest of the dozen country houses that Nash designed as picturesque castles include the relatively small Luscombe Castle Devon ; Ravensworth Castle, begun in 1807 but only finally completed in 1846, which was one of the largest houses by Nash; Caerhays Castle in Cornwall ; and Shanbally Castle, County Tipperary, which was the last of these castles to be built. These buildings all represented Nash's continuing development of an asymmetrical and picturesque architectural style that had begun during his years in Wales, at both Castle House Aberystwyth and his alterations to Hafod Uchtryd.
This process would be extended by Nash in planning groups of buildings, the first example being Blaise Hamlet. There a group of nine asymmetrical cottages was laid out around a village green. Nikolaus Pevsner described the hamlet as "the ne plus ultra of the Picturesque movement". The hamlet has also been described as the first fully realized exemplar of the garden suburb. Nash developed the asymmetry of his castles in his Italianate villas. His first such exercise was Cronkhill, and others included Sandridge Park and Southborough Place, Surbiton.
He advised on work to the buildings of Jesus College, Oxford, in 1815, for which he required no fee but asked that the college commission a portrait of him from Sir Thomas Lawrence to hang in the college hall.