Champneys, Basil

views updated

Champneys, Basil (1842–1935). London-born English architect. He began practice in 1867, and designed many important buildings, including the Selwyn Divinity School, Cambridge (1878–9), in an early Tudor style, and Mansfield College, Oxford (1887–9), in a Gothic Revival style. At the Indian Institute, Oxford (1883–96), he mixed early English Renaissance and Flemish detail. His finest buildings are the John Rylands Library, Manchester (1890–1905), a good example of Arts-and-Crafts Second Pointed Gothic, with tierceron vaulting, and Newnham College, Cambridge (1874–1910), in red brick, with Queen Anne and Dutch Domestic Revival elements.

Bibliography

B. Champneys (1875, 1901);
A. S. Gray (1985);
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004);
Service (ed.) (1975);
Service (1977)