Career
Carr decided to remain in Yorkshire rather than move to London because he calculated that there was ample patronage and the wealth to sustain it. No job was too small. His largest work, only partially finished, was the Hospital de Santo António in Oporto, Portugal.
Carr’s own favourite work was the Crescent at Buxton in Derbyshire, an early example of multifunctional architecture. As well as hotels and lodging houses, it contained Assembly Rooms, shops, a post office and a public promenade all under one roof. On a smaller scale, the same is true of his Newark Town Hall.
Other public buildings included hospitals (e.g., Lincoln and York), racecourse grandstands (e.g. York, Doncaster and Nottingham), and prisons at Wakefield and Northallerton. He designed new churches as well as repairing old ones. His single span roof construction allowed him to build without the traditional subdivision into nave and aisles.
He served as bridgemaster for both the North and West ridings of Yorkshire, leaving a legacy of countless bridges the majority of which still stand today.
His commissions for country houses included model villages and farms, stable blocks, a variety of gate lodges and gateways, garden temples and other ornamental buildings.
He took particular care with their planning and construction to maximise value for money for both the immediate patron and for the buildings future long-term maintenance. He used traditional materials and methods of construction where these had proved sound, but adopted new methods and materials where these could be shown to have an advantage. He liked well proportioned rooms which were satisfactory living spaces with or without decorative enrichment. In his view the latter could be provided later if money permitted. As a result most of his buildings were completed and because of the soundness of construction most survive.
Among the buildings accessible in whole or part to the public today are Buxton Crescent, Newark Town Hall, virtually all his bridges, Harewood House, Tabley House and Burton Constable Hall.
Read more about this topic: John Carr (architect)
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