George Ledwell Taylor
Encyclopedia
George Ledwell Taylor was an architect and landowner who lived in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

.

Life

George Ledwell Taylor was born on 31 March 1788 and educated at Rawes's academy, Bromley. He became a pupil of the architect James Burton
James Burton (1761–1837)
James Burton was a builder and developer, responsible for large areas of Bloomsbury and the houses around Regent's Park in London. He later founded the new town of St Leonards-on-Sea, which is now part of the built-up area of Hastings...

, and on Burton's retirement, of Joseph Parkinson
Joseph T. Parkinson
Joseph T. Parkinson was an English architect. He was the son of James Parkinson. Apprenticed first to William Pilkington, next he became a member of James Burton's Loyal British Artificers, working for refugees from revolutionary France, before designing a castellated house for Burton's personal...

 , who was then engaged in laying out the Portman estate. While articled to Parkinson, Taylor superintended the building of Montagu
Montagu Square
Montagu Square is a square in Marylebone, London. It is situated a little north of Marble Arch. It is oriented on an axis approximately NNW on the same grid plan that extends eastwards as far as Portland Place. Montagu Place runs along the north end, George Street along the south end...

 and Bryanston Square
Bryanston Square
Bryanston Square is a square in Marylebone, Westminster, London, England. Named after its owner Henry William Portman's home village of Bryanston in Dorset, it was built as part of the Portman Estate between 1810 and 1815, along with Montagu Square a little to the east and Wyndham Place to its...

s (1811), and the neighbouring streets. In 1816 he took two walking tours of England with his fellow-pupil Edward Cresy. In 1817 he and Cresy set off on a grand tour
Grand Tour
The Grand Tour was the traditional trip of Europe undertaken by mainly upper-class European young men of means. The custom flourished from about 1660 until the advent of large-scale rail transit in the 1840s, and was associated with a standard itinerary. It served as an educational rite of passage...

, visiting France, Switzerland and Italy, before spending a summer in Greece. At Pisa, they made a detailed survey of the Campo Santo and the Leaning Tower
Leaning Tower of Pisa
The Leaning Tower of Pisa or simply the Tower of Pisa is the campanile, or freestanding bell tower, of the cathedral of the Italian city of Pisa...

; later publishing the drawings in a volume called Architecture of the Middle Ages in Italy (1829). On their return to England, Taylor and Cresy set up an office in Furnival's Inn
Furnival's Inn
Furnival's Inn was an Inn of Chancery which formerly stood on the site of the present Holborn Bars building in Holborn, London, England.-History:...

. Taylor lived at 52 Bedford Square and, afterwards in Spring Gardens, later moving to a villa at Lee Terrace, Blackheath, one of a group of four he had designed himself.

On 8 June 1820 he married Bella Neufville, by whom he had eleven children.

In 1824 he was appointed surveyor of buildings to the naval department. In this capacity he superintended important works in the dockyards at Chatham
Chatham Dockyard
Chatham Dockyard, located on the River Medway and of which two-thirds is in Gillingham and one third in Chatham, Kent, England, came into existence at the time when, following the Reformation, relations with the Catholic countries of Europe had worsened, leading to a requirement for additional...

, Woolwich
Woolwich Dockyard
Woolwich Dockyard was an English naval dockyard founded by King Henry VIII in 1512 to build his flagship Henri Grâce à Dieu , the largest ship of its day....

, and Sheerness, and alterations to the Clarence victualling yard, Gosport. His work at Sheerness include the neoclassical Royal Dockyard Church of 1828. He built the Melville Hospital, Chatham (1827), and the Woolwich river wall (1831). He received some attention from William IV
William IV of the United Kingdom
William IV was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and of Hanover from 26 June 1830 until his death...

, and claimed to have persuaded the king that the new open space at Charing Cross
Charing Cross
Charing Cross denotes the junction of Strand, Whitehall and Cockspur Street, just south of Trafalgar Square in central London, England. It is named after the now demolished Eleanor cross that stood there, in what was once the hamlet of Charing. The site of the cross is now occupied by an equestrian...

 should be called "Trafalgar Square
Trafalgar Square
Trafalgar Square is a public space and tourist attraction in central London, England, United Kingdom. At its centre is Nelson's Column, which is guarded by four lion statues at its base. There are a number of statues and sculptures in the square, with one plinth displaying changing pieces of...

" rather than ‘King William the Fourth Square", as originally proposed.

In 1837 a programme of budget cuts at the Admiralty led to Taylor's dismissal. He took up general practice, and qualified as a district surveyor. In 1838 he began the spectacular Gothick tower at Hadlow Castle
Hadlow Castle
Hadlow Castle is a Grade I listed country house and tower in Hadlow, Kent, England.-History:Hadlow Castle replaced the manor house of Hadlow Court Lodge. It was built over a number of years from the late 1780s by Walter May in an ornate Gothic style. The architect was J B Bunning...

, a late eighteenth century house in Kent. The tower was based in part on James Wyatt
James Wyatt
James Wyatt RA , was an English architect, a rival of Robert Adam in the neoclassical style, who far outdid Adam in his work in the neo-Gothic style.-Early classical career:...

's tower at Fonthill Abbey
Fonthill Abbey
Fonthill Abbey — also known as Beckford's Folly — was a large Gothic revival country house built around the turn of the 19th century at Fonthill Gifford in Wiltshire, England, at the direction of William Thomas Beckford and architect James Wyatt...

. It was built of brick rendered in Roman cement to imitate stone, the finer architectural detail built up with the cement. He had previously used the Gothick style at a church in Waltham Green, Fulham
Fulham
Fulham is an area of southwest London in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, SW6 located south west of Charing Cross. It lies on the left bank of the Thames, between Putney and Chelsea. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London...

 in 1827-8.

In 1843–8 he laid out considerable portions of the bishop of London's estate, Westbourne Terrace (where he built a house for himself), Chester Place, and parts of Hyde Park Square and Gloucester Square. Around 1851, Taylor designed William Batty
William Batty
William Batty was an equestrian performer, circus proprietor, and longtime operator of Astley's Amphitheatre in London. Batty was one of the most successful circus proprietors in Victorian England, and helped launch the careers of a number of leading Victorian circus personalities, such as Pablo...

's Grand National Hippodrome, also known as Batty's Hippodrome, a 14,000 person open-air arena near Kensington Gardens
Kensington Gardens
Kensington Gardens, once the private gardens of Kensington Palace, is one of the Royal Parks of London, lying immediately to the west of Hyde Park. It is shared between the City of Westminster and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. The park covers an area of 111 hectares .The open spaces...

 and the Crystal Palace Exhibition.

Taylor was the architect and joint surveyor to the Regent's Canal Railway Company, which, in 1845, proposed to fill in the Regent's Canal
Regent's Canal
Regent's Canal is a canal across an area just north of central London, England. It provides a link from the Paddington arm of the Grand Union Canal, just north-west of Paddington Basin in the west, to the Limehouse Basin and the River Thames in east London....

  between Paddington and Limehouse
Limehouse
Limehouse is a place in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It is on the northern bank of the River Thames opposite Rotherhithe and between Ratcliff to the west and Millwall to the east....

 and use its route for a railway. In 1849 he undertook the continuation of the North Kent railway from Stroud, through Chatham, and Canterbury to Dover, but the negotiations fell through, at a personal loss to Taylor of £3,000. After this he abandoned architecture for archæology. In 1856 he revisited Italy with his wife, and stayed at Rome from November 1857 to March 1858, collecting materials for The Stones of Etruria and Marbles of Antient Rome, which he published in 1859. He finally returned to England in 1868. In 1870–2 he published a collection of sketches and descriptions of buildings which he had visited during his travels, under the title of The Auto-Biography of an Octogenarian Architect.

Taylor died at Broadstairs
Broadstairs
Broadstairs is a coastal town on the Isle of Thanet in the Thanet district of east Kent, England, about south-east of London. It is part of the civil parish of Broadstairs and St Peter's, which includes St. Peter's and had a population in 2001 of about 24,000. Situated between Margate and...

on 1 May 1873.
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