Wightwick, George

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Wightwick, George (1802–72). English architect. He assisted the elderly Soane, and in 1827 published Select Views of Roman Antiquities based on a visit to Italy in 1825. In 1829 he established himself in practice in Plymouth, Devon, joined Foulston (who was about to retire) in partnership, and became the leading architect in the West of England. He designed a formidable range of buildings in a variety of styles, but his essays in Gothic did not meet with the approval of the Ecclesiologists, who were particularly strong in the Diocese of Exeter from the time the High Churchman Henry Philpotts (1778–1869\) became Bishop (1831–69). Wightwick was a successful architectural journalist, much of his writing being agreeable and light (in his early years he had contemplated a career as an actor), but he also contributed a weighty essay on the use of iron in architecture to J. C. Loudon's Architectural Magazine (1837), and published an eccentric quasi-Masonic book entitled The Palace of Architecture: A Romance of Art and History (1840), among much else.

Bibliography

Colvin (1995);
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004);
W. Papworth (1892);
Wightwick (1840, 1851)

A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture

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Wightwick, George

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