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ROBINSON, William - b. ~1720 Kepyer, d. 1775 London - WGA

ROBINSON, William

(b. ~1720 Kepyer, d. 1775 London)

English architect. He came to London, and was in 1746 appointed clerk of the works to Greenwich Hospital, where he superintended in 1763 the building of the infirmary, designed by James Stuart (1713-1788). Between 1750 and 1775 he assisted Horace Walpole in executing the latter’s plans for Strawberry Hill. Simultaneously he was clerk of the works at St. James’s, Whitehall, and Westminster, and surveyor to the London board of customs, for whom he designed, between 1770 and 1775, the excise office in Old Broad Street.

In 1770 he was secretary to the board of works, an office which he retained until his death. He made a design for rebuilding the Savoy, but this was superseded, on his death, by Sir William Chambers’s plan for Somerset House. He died of gout at his residence in Scotland Yard on 10 Oct. 1775, and was buried in the chapel at Greenwich Hospital.

His brother Thomas (1727-1810) was master gardener to George III at Kensington, while another brother Robert was an architect in Edinburgh.

Exterior view
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Exterior view

William Robinson built Horace Walpole a light-hearted neo-Gothic country house at Strawberry Hill. Horace Walpole (Horatio Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford, 1717-1797), an English art historian, man of letters, antiquarian and Whig politician, acquired the land by 1749.

The most important feature of the country house was the gallery with fan vaulting, the work of Thomas Pitt. Thomas Pitt, 1st Baron Camelford (1737-1793) was a British politician, amateur architect and connoisseur of art. From March 1762 Pitt lived at Twickenham, and he was there the neighbour of Horace Walpole, who recognised his skill in Gothic architecture, and went so far as to call him “my present architect.” The gallery had been modeled on Henry VII’s chapel at Westminster Abbey.

Walpole’s house, regarded by contemporaries as a curiosity partly because of its largely frivolous interpretation of medieval form, was subsequently recognized as an important precursor of the more accurate reproductions the nineteenth-century Gothic Revival. The building is a good example of the way in which the vision of an amateur architect influenced architectural history in England.

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Interior view
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Interior view

William Robinson built Horace Walpole a light-hearted neo-Gothic country house at Strawberry Hill. Horace Walpole (Horatio Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford, 1717-1797), an English art historian, man of letters, antiquarian and Whig politician, acquired the land by 1749.

The most important feature of the country house was the gallery with fan vaulting, the work of Thomas Pitt. Thomas Pitt, 1st Baron Camelford (1737-1793) was a British politician, amateur architect and connoisseur of art. From March 1762 Pitt lived at Twickenham, and he was there the neighbour of Horace Walpole, who recognised his skill in Gothic architecture, and went so far as to call him “my present architect.” The gallery had been modeled on Henry VII’s chapel at Westminster Abbey.

Walpole’s house, regarded by contemporaries as a curiosity partly because of its largely frivolous interpretation of medieval form, was subsequently recognized as an important precursor of the more accurate reproductions the nineteenth-century Gothic Revival. The building is a good example of the way in which the vision of an amateur architect influenced architectural history in England.

The picture shows the Gallery.

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