Inwood, William

views updated

Inwood, William (c.1771–1843), English surveyor and architect. He was the author of Tables for the Purchasing of Estates (1811 and several editions thereafter). He designed many houses, barracks, and warehouses in collaboration with his son, Henry William (1794–1843), who brought his scholarly understanding of the Greek Revival to their buildings. There were two other sons, both architects: Charles Frederick (1799–1840), designer of the Church of All Saints, Marlow, Bucks (1832–5), and Edward (1802–40). Henry William travelled in Italy and Greece (1818–19), and published The Erechtheion at Athens: Fragments of Athenian Architecture and a few remains in Attica, Megara, and Epirus (1827), the standard work on the great Greek temple. His undoubted scholarship was displayed in St Pancras New Church, London (1819), one of the finest monuments of the Greek Revival, which adapted Gibbs's type of the Anglican church using Greek motifs (portico, caryatides, and windows from the Erechtheion, and a steeple derived from the Tower of the Winds). It was designed in collaboration with his father, with whom he also built All Saints, Camden Town (1822–4), and St Peter's, Regent Square (1822–5, demolished). They designed St Mary's Chapel, Somers Town (1824–7), a thin and unscholarly Gothic effort lampooned by A. W. N. Pugin in Contrasts (1836). W. H. Inwood also published The Resources of Design in the Architecture of Greece, Egypt, and other Countries (1834). He died when the ship on which he was travelling to Spain foundered with the loss of all on board.

Bibliography

Crook (1972a);
Colvin (1995);
J. Curl (2001);
Inwood (1827, 1834);
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004);
Summerson (ed.) (1993, 2003)