Chiswick House, a Palladian villa in Burlington…

1729 CE

Chiswick House, a Palladian villa in Burlington Lane, Chiswick, London, belongs to Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington, better known as Lord Burlington, whose taste and skill as an architect have been frequently recorded.

The "architect earl," one of the originators of the English Palladian (Neo-Palladian) style of the 18th century, has designed and built it in from 1726 to 1729, with garden design input from William Kent.

The octagonal domed Palladian villa is inspired by the Villa Capra "La Rotonda" near Vicenza and at the same time a fine example of eighteenth-century architecture, with its colonnaded portico on the upper storey, the frescoed ceilings, the velvet rooms and the stone rooms.

One of the most influential Palladian buildings in England, Chiswick House differs from the Villa Capra in having three different designs to the facades (front, back, and two matching sides) rather than being symmetrical all the way round.

There is also a superb collection of paintings and palladian furnishings.

Christ Church, Spitalfields, London, designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor (Christopher Wren's greatest pupil) and begun in 1714, is completed in 1729.

The architectural composition of Christ Church demonstrates Hawksmoor’s usual abruptness: the very plain rectangular box of the nave is surmounted at its west end by a broad tower of three stages topped by a steeple more Gothic than classical.

The magnificent Tuscan porch with its semi circular pediment is bluntly attached to the west end: it may indeed be a late addition to the design intended to add further support to the tower.

Like those of Hawksmoor’s other London churches and many of Wren’s, the central space is of the nave is organised around two axes, the shorter originally emphasized by two entrances of which only that to the south remains.

It has a richly decorated flat ceiling and is lit by a clerestory.

The aisles are roofed with elliptical barrel-vaults carried on a raised Composite order (as in Wren’s St. James, Piccadilly), and the same order is used for the screens across the east and west ends.

The Venetian window at the east may show the growing influence of the Palladians, or it may be a rhyme with the arched pediment of the entrance portico, repeated in the wide main stage of the tower.

Hawksmoor had worked for a time with the late Sir John Vanbrugh, helping him build Blenheim Palace for John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, where he took charge after Vanbrugh's final break with the demanding Duchess of Marlborough, and Castle Howard for Charles Howard, later the 3rd Earl of Carlisle.

Hawksmoor had conceived the idea of a round library for the Radcliffe Camera but did not design that building himself.

He did design a total six new churches in London, as well as ...