Colen Campbell - Campbell's Main Commissions

Campbell's Main Commissions

• Wanstead House, Essex: ca 1713/4 – 20 (illustrated left) In the first volume of Vitruvius Britannicus the most influential designs were two alternatives for a palatial Wanstead House, Essex, for the merchant-banker Sir Richard Child, of which the second design was already under way when the volume was published. (Campbell claimed that Wanstead House had Great Britain's first classical portico, but this accolade probably belongs to The Vyne, Hampshire.)

• Burlington House, London 1717. Remodelled the front and provided an entrance gateway for Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington (Remodelled in 1868 and the gateway demolished.)

• Stourhead, Wiltshire, 1721–24, as a seat for the London-based banker Henry Hoare. Wings were added in the later 18th century, and Campbell's portico was not executed (though to his design) until 1841. The famous landscape garden round a lake, somewhat apart from the house, was developed after Campbell's death, by Henry Flitcroft and Lancelot "Capability" Brown.

• Pembroke House, Whitehall, London, for Henry Herbert, 9th Earl of Pembroke, 1723, a London house in a prominent location for the heir of Jones' Wilton House. It was rebuilt in 1757 and demolished in 1913. Lord Herbert (as he then was) was inspired by it to design the similar Marble Hill at Twickenham for Henrietta Howard, Countess of Suffolk, the mistress of the future George II. (Marble Hill was a 5-bay palladian villa with central pediment, raised on a high basement, with clumped screens of trees and formal turfed terraces descending to the Thames, illustrated right, that manifest the earliest stages of the English landscape garden.)

• Houghton Hall, Norfolk, begun 1722, for Sir Robert Walpole, the Whig prime minister. Here Campbell was replaced by Gibbs, who capped the end pavilions with octagonal domes, and by William Kent, who designed the interiors.

• Mereworth Castle, Kent 1722 – 25: Campbell's most overtly palladian design, based on Villa La Rotonda, capped with a dome with no drum, through which 24 chimney flues pass to the lantern.

• Waverley Abbey, Surrey ca 1723–25 for John Aislabie (largely altered)

• Nos 76 and 78 Brook Street, London W1, 1725 – 26. No. 76, which survives, was Campbell's own house, the designs for its interiors published in his Five Orders of architecture, (1729). It carries a blue plaque commemorating him.

• Compton Place, Eastbourne, Sussex, 1726 onwards, south front and extensive internal rebuilding for Sir Spencer Compton