65 Facts About William Burges

William Burges was an English architect and designer.

William Burges's career was short but illustrious; he won his first major commission for Saint Fin Barre's Cathedral in Cork in 1863 when he was 35.

William Burges died in 1881 at his Kensington home, The Tower House aged only 53.

William Burges lost out to George Edmund Street in the competition for the Royal Courts of Justice in The Strand.

Beyond architecture, William Burges designed metalwork, sculpture, jewellery, furniture and stained glass.

For most of the century following his death, Victorian architecture was neither the subject of intensive study nor sympathetic attention and William Burges's work was largely ignored.

William Burges was born on 2 December 1827, the son of Alfred William Burges, a wealthy civil engineer.

William Burges left in 1844 to join the office of Edward Blore, surveyor to Westminster Abbey.

In 1848 or 1849, William Burges moved to the offices of Matthew Digby Wyatt.

William Burges received his first important commission at the age of 35, but his subsequent career did not see the development that might have been expected.

William Burges's style had already been formed over the previous twenty years of study, thinking and travelling.

In 1856 William Burges established his own architectural practice in London at 15 Buckingham Street, The Strand.

William Burges provided designs for Colombo Cathedral in Ceylon and St Francis Xavier's Cathedral, Adelaide, without success.

In 1859 William Burges began work with Ambrose Poynter on the Maison Dieu, Dover, which was completed in 1861.

William Burges later designed the Council Chamber, added in 1867, and in 1881 began work on Connaught Hall in Dover, a town meeting and concert hall.

William Burges was the daughter of James Walker, who established the marine engineering company of Walker and Burges with Burges's father Alfred, and this family connection brought Burges the commission.

William Burges, who had worked in Ireland before, at the Church of St Peter, Carrigrohane, at the Holy Trinity Church Templebreedy, at Frankfield and at Douglas, enjoyed strong local support, including that of the Bishop, John Gregg.

William Burges overcame this obstacle by using the grandeur of his three-spired exterior to offset the lesser scale of the remainder of the building.

William Burges drew designs for every one of the 1,260 sculptures that adorn the West Front and decorate the building inside and out.

William Burges sketched cartoons for the majority of the 74 stained glass windows.

William Burges designed the mosaic pavement, the altar, the pulpit and the bishop's throne.

William Burges inspired considerable loyalty within his team of assistants, and his partnerships were long-lived.

Lastly, there was Axel Haig, a Swedish-born illustrator, who prepared many of the watercolour perspectives with which William Burges entranced his clients.

In 1865, William Burges met John Patrick Crichton-Stuart, 3rd Marquess of Bute.

The architectural writer Michael Hall considers William Burges's rebuilding of Cardiff Castle and the complete reconstruction of the ruin of Castell Coch, north of the city, as representing his highest achievements.

The 3rd Marquess despised Holland's efforts, describing the castle as having been "the victim of every barbarism since the Renaissance", and, on his coming of age, engaged William Burges to undertake rebuilding on a Wagnerian scale.

Externally, the tower is a re-working of a design William Burges used for the unsuccessful Law Courts competition.

In 1872, while work at Cardiff Castle was proceeding, William Burges presented a scheme for the complete reconstruction of Castell Coch, a ruined thirteenth-century fort on the Bute estate to the north of Cardiff.

Viollet-le-Duc's work at the Chateau de Coucy, The Louvre and particularly at the Chateau de Pierrefonds is echoed at Castell Coch, William Burges's Drawing Room roof drawing heavily on the octagonal, rib-vaulted chambre de l'Imperatrice at Pierrefonds.

In 1864, Burges was commissioned to overhaul Wyatt's unremarkable designs for the chapel by the Reverend H C O Daniel, a member of the college's Senior Common Room and future Provost, who had known Burges when they were contemporaries at King's College London.

Unusually, in the redecoration of the Chapel, William Burges did not use members of his usual team.

In some cases, where there were no known crests or shields, those of former members were substituted and William Burges made several painted imitations of marbling on wood.

William Burges was commissioned by the Skilbeck Brothers to remodel an existing warehouse; the result was influential, Eastlake describing it as, "one of the very few instances of the successful adaptation of Gothic for commercial purposes".

The style of the house is Early French Gothic, with triangle and rectangle to the fore, although it is without the conical tower William Burges considered appropriate both for his own home, The Tower House and for Castell Coch.

William Burges used various building stones for Park House: Pennant Sandstone for the walls, Bath Stone around the windows, entrance porch and plinths, with pillars in pink Peterhead granite from Aberdeenshire.

In 1870, William Burges was asked to draw up an iconographic scheme of internal decoration for St Paul's Cathedral, unfinished since the death of Sir Christopher Wren.

William Burges was chosen and he drew up a four-quadrangled masterplan, in his Early French style.

From 1875, although he continued to work on the completion of projects already begun, William Burges received no further major commissions.

William Burges designed the house in the style of a substantial thirteenth-century French townhouse.

The interior centres on the double-height entrance hall, William Burges having avoided the error that he had made at the McConnochie House when he placed a vast central staircase in the middle of the building.

William Burges was a notable designer of Gothic-inspired metalwork and jewellery, and he has been cited as "Pugin's successor in the Gothic revival style".

William Burges had an early, and close, connection to the Ecclesiological Society and in 1864 took on the role of superintendent of the Society's church plate scheme, from which position he imposed Barkentin as the Society's official manufacturer.

In 1875 William Burges published the design in a French magazine as a thirteenth century original, an example of his delight in tricks and jokes.

William Burges undertook commissions for other patrons, including the Sneyd dessert service.

On 3 April 1872, William Burges produced a gothic-style brooch for the marriage of the Marquess of Bute to Lady Bute.

Only four examples of works in ceramic by William Burges are known to exist.

William Burges played an important role in the renaissance of High Victorian stained glass.

William Burges undertook significant work at Waltham Abbey with Edward Burne-Jones, but much of his work there was destroyed in the Blitz.

The panels were part of a set of twenty William Burges designed for the chapel at Castell Coch but were removed when the unfinished chapel was demolished.

Research has led to being William Burges properly credited with work previously attributed to others.

William Burges's furniture is characterised by its historical style, its mythological iconography, its vibrant painting and, often, by rather poor workmanship.

William Burges gave the washstand to the novelist Evelyn Waugh who made it the centrepiece of his 1957 novel, The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold, in which Pinfold is haunted by the stand.

Examples of William Burges's painted furniture can be seen in major museums including the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the National Museum Wales and the Manchester Art Gallery.

William Burges was physically unprepossessing, described by the wife of his greatest patron as "ugly Burges".

Short, fat, and so near-sighted that he once mistook a peacock for a man, William Burges appears to have been sensitive about his appearance and very few images of him exist.

William Burges became a member of the Athenaeum Club in 1874, was a member of the Arts Club, the Medieval Society, the Hogarth Club, and was elected to the Royal Academy in the year of his death.

William Burges was a fanatical collector, particularly of drawings and metalwork.

William Burges was a Freemason, a member of the same London lodge as his fellow architect William Eden Nesfield.

William Burges died, aged 53, in his Red Bed at the Tower House, at 11.45 pm on Wednesday 20 April 1881.

William Burges was buried in the tomb he designed for his mother at West Norwood, London.

In Saint Fin Barre's, together with memorials to his mother and sister, there is a memorial plaque to William Burges, designed by him, and erected by his father.

Under the inscription "Architect of this cathedral" is a simple shield and a small, worn, plaque with a mosaic surround, bearing William Burges's entwined initials and name.

William Burges's buildings were disregarded or altered, his jewellery and stained glass were lost or ignored, and his furniture was given away.

William Burges received brief, but largely favourable, attention in Muthesius's Das englische Haus, where Muthesius described him as "the most talented Gothicist of his day".

The catalogue to that exhibition, entitled The Strange Genius of William Burges, was edited by J Mordaunt Crook.