Richardson, Charles James

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Richardson, Charles James (1806–71). English architect. A pupil of Soane, he seems to have imbibed very little in terms of style or refinement from his master. He designed 13 Kensington Palace Gardens, London (1851–3— now the Russian Embassy—in a coarse quasi-Tudor style), and various houses in Queen's Gate, Kensington, London, including ‘Albert Houses’ (nos. 47–52) of c.1860, in a lavish Classical style. He collected architectural drawings, including work by Adam, Tatham, Thorpe, and Vanbrugh (now in the Victoria & Albert Museum), and published Observations on the Architecture of England During the Reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James I (1837), Architectural Remains of the Reigns of Elizabeth and James I (1840), Studies from Old English Mansions (1841–8), Studies of Ornamental Design (1848 and 1852), Picturesque Designs for Mansions, Villas, Lodges, etc. (1870), and The Englishman's Home from a Cottage to a Mansion (1871), some plates of which resemble the Tudorbethan St Ann's Villas, Norland Estate, North Kensington (1840s). His books gained him a reputation as an expert on Jacobethan architecture.

Bibliography

Jervis (1984);
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004);
W. Papworth (1887);
Sheppard (ed.) (1973, 1975)

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Richardson, Charles James

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