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Presentation of an Architect

Basil Champneys, English architect and writer, was born in Whitechapel, London, on September

the 17th, 1842 in a lower middle-class family with 8 children. His intelligence, strong personality

and a very positive attitude toward work helped him to be accepted at Charterhouse . Although he

lacked drawing talent he managed to get admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1860, thanks

to his excellent aptitudes in mathematics. Later he used the opportunity to study architecture with

John Prichard of Llandaff focusing on Gothic style. Once his architectural vision has matured he

moved on to experiencing a new style and became one of the pioneers of Queen Anne style

which endowed about 100 of his edifices that have been built throughout England. (10)

Champneys set up in practice in 1867 in Queen's Square, London where he began moving in the

circle of William Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, lunching his career with the church of St Luke,

Kenetish Town (1868-1870) where he had a false/low start for his later architectural work style.

Believing that the architecture was 'an art not a science' he joined the Art Workers guild instead of

the Royal Institute of British Architects,'he thought of himself as an artist, an individualist, and

always preferred to be disassociated from the architectural establishment, having firmly declined

to join the institution to which he was lecturing'.(11)

Only after the experience that he would obtain after the projects in St Luke's, Matfield (Kent), and

St Peter le Bailey at Oxford in 1874 he was able to demonstrate ''his abrupt and English late

Gothic manner which Bodley (1827-1907) had embraced during the previous decade''. In the next

few years he experimented with medieval styles finally obtained an unique way that is

characteristic with his widely known Queen Anne work. In his work, such as St George's, Star of

the Sea, Hastings (1882-1887), design for Coventry Patmore,Champneys he was not so in the

main idea of Gothic style,he used a combination of Gothic style and Tudor style. There are more

examples like St Gerorge's, Glascote, Staffs (1876-1880) where Champneys used different

phases of Gothic styles, (mixing them) all these became to define his later style/work.(revival

Gothic style). (12)

In the John Rylands library he finally succeeded to apply his true style, he applied historical

motifs and forms in a new modern building ''the john Rylands library..represents the culmination of

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the unusually strong historicist trend which dominates the Gothic works of the central part of

Champneys' (13)

Champneys Oxford buildings include the Indian Institute (1883-1896), Mansfield (1887-1890), the

Robinson Tower at New College (1896), The Rhodes Building in Oriel College (1908-1911),

Merton College (1904-1910), the library of Somerville College (1903) and the church of St Peter-

le-Bailey (1872-1874), which serves as the chapel for St Peters College.

His Cambridge works include the Archaeological Museum (1883), now Peterhouse Theatre, the

Divinity and Literary School and Newnham College (between 1875 and 1910), for which he is

credited for bringing a touch of lightness to the college and is acknowledged for his attention to

both construction details, and to cost.

Champneys buildings elsewhere include the chapel of Mill Hill School, London (1898), buildings

for Bedford College in Regents Park (1910), Kings Lynn Grammar School, Norfolk (1910-1913),

the Butler Museum at Harrow School (1886), the museum at Winchester College (1898), and

Bedford High School (1878-1892).Churches by Champneys include his fathers parish church, St

Lukes, Kentish Town (1867-1870), the sailors church of St Mary Star of the Sea, Hastings

(1878), and St Chad, Slindon, Staffordshire (1894). In 1898 he added a porch to St Mary,

Manchester, where he was surveyor, and between 1902 and 1903, a south annexe. His home,

Hall Oak, in Frognall, Hampstead was also one of his works.

Champneys published in 1874 ''A Quit corner of England'', and two biographies, in 1901 Coventry

Patmore, and in 1906 Adelaide Drummond.(The Architecture of Basil Champneys, David

Watkin, Newnham College Cambridge, 1989) (''Basil Champneys: An Unde Victorian'', Sussan

James, in ''The Victorian'', March 2003, No 13) (14)

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