Nash, John

Nash, John (1752–1835). English architect, master of scenography, urban designer, and important architect of the Picturesque. He trained in the office of Sir Robert Taylor before setting up on his own in 1775 as a designer and builder of stucco-fronted houses. Bankrupted in 1783, he moved to Wales, where he met Uvedale Price and was initiated into the cult of the Picturesque. While there he designed the County Gaol, Carmarthen (1789–92—demolished), and other buildings, and became so busy he had to take on A. C. Pugin, then a refugee, as a draughtsman. He returned to London in 1796 and formed a partnership with Humphry Repton, the fashionable landscape-gardener, who had ample opportunities to pick up architectural commissions. Between them they remodelled many country seats and grounds, enhancing their Picturesque qualities, before the partnership was dissolved in 1802. Nash went from strength to strength, designing many houses and villas, including Killymoon Castle, Co. Tyrone (c.1801–3—castellated with round arches), the very pretty Cronkhill, Shlop. (c.1802—Italianate and asymmetrical), and Caerhayes Castle, Cornwall (c.1808—castellated). These asymmetrical compositions were influenced by Payne Knight's important house, Downton Castle, Herefs. (begun 1772). Nash built an estate of cottages at Blaise Hamlet, near Bristol (1810–11), the prototype of the Picturesque village, with a heady brew of thatch, leaded lights, elaborate chimneys, asymmetry, and ‘rustic’ architecture loosely based on vernacular forms.

Nash was appointed architect to the Office of Woods and Forests (1806), and from this time was in favour with the Prince of Wales (later Prince Regent and King George IV (reigned 1820–30) ). He laid out Marylebone Park, London, an estate that reverted to the Crown in 1811, with proposals that became (1819) Regent's Park, an agreeably planted area around which were huge stucco-fronted palatial terraces and private villas. The façades of Cornwall and Clarence Terraces were designed by Decimus Burton, and Cumberland Gate and Terrace were built under James Thomson. Nash himself designed Ulster, York, Hanover, Kent, Chester, Cambridge, and St Andrew's Terraces, York Gate, Sussex Place, and Park Square (1821–30). Park Crescent was built 1812–22. Of the villas, Nash designed Hanover Lodge, and was responsible for the layout and many of the designs of the Park Villages (begun 1824), really a model suburb, completed by Pennethorne, and including Italianate and Picturesque barge-boarded inventions. So that the new Park should be connected to Westminster, Nash proposed a new street (Regent Street), linked to the existing Portland Place (1776–90—by James and Robert Adam) by means of a curved thoroughfare laid out around the ingenious portico and steeple of the Church of All Souls, Langham Place (1822–5—designed by Nash himself), then crossing Oxford Street and terminating (by means of The Quadrant) at Piccadilly Circus. The of The Quadrant) at Piccadilly Circus. The palatial blocks along the street were designed as scenographic events (begun 1813, but all destroyed and replaced.

Nash became personal architect to the Regent and remodelled the Royal Pavilion, Brighton, Sussex (1815–21), in the Hindoo and Chinese styles, exotically intermingled. Once the Prince became King in 1820, Nash was ordered to reconstruct Buckingham House (later Palace) on the most lavish scale: much of his work there (1820–30) survives, although the Mall front was twice changed, first by Blore and then by Aston Webb. Other designs include the Royal Opera Arcade, Haymarket (1816–18), the Haymarket Theatre (1820–1), Suffolk Street and Suffolk Place (1820s), Clarence House, St James's (1825–8), the United Services Club, Pall Mall (1826–8), the West Strand improvements opposite Charing Cross (1830–2), and Carlton House Terrace, the Mall (1827–33), which has a row of cast-iron Greek Doric columns on the Mall front. One of his most exquisite designs was Marble Arch, originally designed to stand in front of Buckingham Palace, but moved to its present inappropriate site in 1851.

Nash's works have suffered greatly from demolitions and alterations, and of his brilliant scheme linking Waterloo Place to Regent's Park very little remains of the architecture. His eclecticism, charm, scenographic effects, and widespread use of stucco did not find favour with younger architects, concerned as they were with purity, morality, expression of structure and materials, and the Gothic Revival. Yet he was the most successful civic designer London has ever had, and it is curious he has not had the appreciation he deserves, even from some of those who have written about him.

Bibliography

Ballantyne (1997);
Colvin 1995);
Colvin (ed.) (1973);
T. Davis (1973);
Freer (1993);
Hobhouse (1975);
Mansbridge (1973);
Middleton & and Watkin (1987);
Musgrave (1959);
Placzek (ed.) (1982);
H. Roberts (1939);
Summerson (ed.) (1980a);
Temple (1979);
Jane Turner (1996)