James Gibbs
James Gibbs - A Famous Scottish Architect
James Gibbs (1682 - 1754) James Gibbs was a native od Aberdeenshire, was trained as an architect in Italy under Carlo Fontana. Whiloe in Rome he mixed with the English nobility and gentry, and on his return to England in 1709 he used these connections as well as his Tory sympathies to establish himself in London. In 1713 the Earl of Oxford secured his appointment as surveyor to the Commissioners for Building fifty New Churches in London. Although the fall of the Tories in 1714 and his own Scottish background told against him under the Hanoverians, Gibbs remained a sought-after architect, particularly in aristocratic and university circles.
The most distinguished work of Gibbs in London was St Martin in the Fields (1722-1726). Although to some the massive portico and the spire do not blend entirely happy, he was original in designing a steeple that was an integral part of the building instead of being a separate structure from ground level as in Wren's churches. He had already designed the steeple for Christopher Wren's St Clement Danes Church and had been sole architect for the nearby St Mary-le-Strand in 1714-1717. These churches show his debt to Wren, as well as the modifieed influence of Italian architecture. Outside London his chief activity in church building centred on the designs for St Nicholas church in Aberdeeb abd for what is now the cathedral in Derby (except for the medieval west tower).
In addition to designs for alterations or additions to some 35 country houses, including the palace at Cannons for the duke of Chandos, Gibbs was responsible for the brilliant and original Radcliffe Camera at Oxford in 1737-1749. In this building the central dome is supported on a drum with massive engaged columns - the whole creating an admirable contrast to the surrounding Gothic and mock-Gothic architecture. For Cambridge he designed the small but perfefctly proportioned Senate House in 1722-1730, and in 1724-1749 the new building in King's College that named after him. This was originally intended as part of a major redevelopment of the college in which the chapel was to be given a Palladian setting, but only one part was completed. Two books by Gibbs, A Book of Architecture and Rules for Drawing the Several Parts of Architecture, earned him a handsome £1,500 and they became standard handbooks on correct style in the 18th century.
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