Edward Blore

For the cricketer, see Edward Blore (cricketer).

Edward Blore (13 September 1787 – 4 September 1879) was a 19th-century English landscape and architectural artist, architect and antiquary.

Edward Blore
Blore, by Georg Koberwein (1820–1876)
Born	(1787-09-13)13 September 1787 Derby, England
Died	4 September 1879(1879-09-04) (aged 91) Manchester Square, London
Resting place	Highgate Cemetery West, London, England 51°34′01″N 0°08′49″E / 51.567°N 0.147°E / 51.567; 0.147
Nationality	British
Occupation	Architect
Known for	Buckingham Palace; Lambeth Palace restoration

Early career

 

Buckingham Palace as completed by Blore in 1850. It was later refaced and altered by Aston Webb in 1913.

 

Vorontsov Palace in Alupka, Crimea, Ukraine.

 

Government House, Sydney, Australia.

 

Grave of Edward Blore in Highgate Cemetery (west), north London

He was born in Derby, the son of the antiquarian writer Thomas Blore.^[1]

Blore's background was in antiquarian draughtsmanship rather than architecture, in which he had no formal training. Nevertheless, he designed a large palace for Prince Mikhail Semyonovich Vorontsov in Alupka, Crimea, and important ecclesiastical furnishings designed by him included organ cases for Winchester Cathedral and Peterborough Cathedral (the Peterborough case since removed) and the choir stalls in Westminster Abbey. Charles Locke Eastlake, writing in 1872, believed that he had been apprenticed to an engraver,^[2] but other sources dispute this.^[3] He illustrated his father's History of Rutland (1811), and over the next few years he made the drawings of York Minster and Peterborough Cathedral and measured drawings of Winchester Cathedral for John Britton's English Cathedrals, and drew architectural subjects for various county histories.^[1] In 1816 he was introduced to Walter Scott and worked with William Atkinson on the design of Abbotsford House.^[4] In around 1822 Blore supplied the illustrations to Thomas Frognall Dibdin's Aedes Althorpianæ.^[2] In 1823 he toured Northern England, making drawings for a work called the Monumental Remains of Noble and Eminent Persons. It was issued in parts with text by the Rev. Philip Bliss, and completed in 1826. Blore engraved many of the plates himself.^[5]

Westminster Abbey and Lambeth Palace

In 1826, he was appointed Surveyor of the Fabric of Westminster Abbey.^[6] The following year he was engaged to furnish plans for the chancel fittings of Peterborough Cathedral. Shortly afterwards he was employed to restore Lambeth Palace, then in a state of near ruin. His work there included the construction of a fire-proof room for the preservation of manuscripts and archives.^[7]

Eastlake praised Blore's careful detail in his work at Westminster Abbey, adding "this was, in short, his great forte. He had studied and drawn detail so long and zealously that its design came quite naturally to him, and in this respect he was incomparably superior to his contemporaries".^[8]

Later career

Blore is most notable for his completion of John Nash's design of Buckingham Palace. Following Nash's dismissal, he completed the palace in a style similar to but plainer than that intended by Nash. In 1847, Blore returned to the palace and designed the great facade facing The Mall thus enclosing the central quadrangle. He also worked on St James's Palace in London, and a large number of other designs in England and Scotland, including restoring the Salisbury Tower at Windsor Castle.

Blore was a personal friend of Sir Walter Scott, having been introduced by Daniel Terry,^[3] and like Scott was interested in the baronial architecture of Scottish castles. This led to Prince Vorontsov's invitation to design his extensive Vorontsov Palace in Alupka, Crimea. The Alupka palace was built between 1828 and 1846, in a mixture of styles ranging from Gothic Revival to Moorish Revival. The palace's guidebook describes the building as "Blore's tribute to Muslim architecture". The structure features two façades, contrasting "the starkness of Scottish Baronial on its landward side with Arabian fantasy facing the sea".^[9]

As a recognised establishment architect, Blore was involved in many projects related to the British Empire; this included Government House in Sydney, Australia, which he designed in 1834 in the form of a Gothic castle. Such designs were unusual and display a more adventurous side to Blore's work than can be seen from his work in London. His East front, the public face, of Buckingham Palace was criticised from the moment of its completion as banal street architecture, a view shared by King George V who had the façade redesigned by Sir Aston Webb in 1913. Around 1840 Blore was possibly responsible for alterations at Wythenshawe Hall in Manchester.^[10]

He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1841.

Death

Blore died at home, 4, Manchester Square, London, on 4 September 1879,^[1] and was buried in Highgate Cemetery (West), Highgate, London.

Students

Architects Philip Charles Hardwick and Frederick Marrable and Henry Clutton were his pupils. William Mason worked for him before going to Australia and New Zealand.^{[citation needed]}

Buildings

• Abbotsford House
• Bedford Modern School, now the Harpur Centre facade
• Buckingham Palace
• Cambridge University Press: Pitt Building
• Chapel at College of St Mark and St John, London (1841)
• Christ Church (formerly Holy Trinity) Waltham Cross (1831-2)^[11]
• Crewe Hall, Cheshire: alterations^[12] and estate buildings^[13][14]
• Crom Castle, County Fermanagh, Ulster
• Goodrich Court, Herefordshire (1828)
• Government House, Sydney (1835)
• Great Moreton Hall, Congleton, Cheshire (1841–1843)
• Kingston Hall, Nottinghamshire (1842–1846)
• Lambeth Palace: restoration
• St James's Palace: alterations
• St John's Church, Stratford, London (1833–1834)
• St John the Baptist, Leytonstone, London (1832-1833)^[15]
• St Luke's Church, Berwick Street, London, 1839 (demolished 1936)^[16]
• St Peter's Church, Stepney, London (1837–1838)
• St Thomas, Charterhouse. London, 1842^[17]
• Trinity Hospital, Retford, 1833 (Grade II listed)
• Vorontsov Palace, Alupka
• Warminster Town Hall, Wiltshire (c.1837);^[18] imitates Longleat^[19]
• Watt Library, Greenock
• Westminster Abbey: choir and screen

See also

• List of ecclesiastical works by Edward Blore
• List of miscellaneous works by Edward Blore
• List of works by Edward Blore on palaces and large houses

References

1. Wroth 1886.
2. Eastlake 1873, p.138
3. Port, M. H. "Blore, Edward". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/2679. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
4. "Edward Blore". Dictionary of Scottish Architects. n.d. Retrieved 27 September 2022.
5. Eastlake 1873, p.138—9
6. Eastlake 1873, p.139
7. Eastlake 1873, p.140
8. Eastlake 1873, p.141
9. . ExeterInternational. Archived from the original on 3 May 2006. Retrieved 3 May 2006.
10. "Wythenshawe Hall – Pastscape". Historic England. Archived from the original on 13 July 2012. Retrieved 18 March 2016.
11. "CHRIST CHURCH WALTHAM CROSS, Non Civil Parish - 1100564 | Historic England". historicengland.org.uk. Retrieved 28 May 2023.
12. Historic England. "Crewe Hall (Grade I) (1138666)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 11 August 2021.
13. Historic England. "Former stables at Crewe Hall (Grade II*) (1138667)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 11 August 2021.
14. Historic England. "North Lodge to Crewe Hall Park (Grade II) (1138675)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 11 August 2021.
15. "CHURCH OF ST JOHN THE BAPTIST, Non Civil Parish - 1357631 | Historic England". historicengland.org.uk. Retrieved 4 January 2023.
16. 'Broadwick and Peter Street Area', in Survey of London: Volumes 31 and 32, St James Westminster, Part 2, ed. F H W Sheppard (London, 1963), pp. 219-229 British History Online. Retrieved 17 December 2023.
17. "The Churches of the Metropolis. — No. VI. The New Church of St. Thomas Charterhouse". The Illustrated London News. 13 August 1842. p. 217. Retrieved 27 September 2022 – via Victorian Web.
18. . Archived from the original on 17 March 2012. Retrieved 25 January 2011.
19. Historic England. "Town Hall (Grade II) (1364438)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 11 August 2021.

Attribution

•   This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Stephen, Leslie, ed. (1886). "Blore, Edward". Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 5. London: Smith, Elder & Co.

Sources

• Eastlake, Charles Locke (1872). A History of the Gothic Revival. London: Longmans, Green & Co.

Further reading

• Sir Banister Fletcher: Banister Fletcher's A History of Architecture – Editor: Dan Cruickshank (Architectural Press, Oxford, 1996) ISBN 0-7506-2267-9
• Charlotte Gere and Michael Whiteway: Nineteenth-Century Design: From Pugin to Mackintosh (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1993) ISBN 0-297-83068-6

External links

•   Works by or about Edward Blore at Wikisource