Taylor, George Ledwell
Taylor, George Ledwell (1788–1873). English architect. Articled to James T. Parkinson (fl. c.1800–c.1840) in 1804, he was involved in the building of Montague and Bryanston Squares and other parts of the Portman Estate in London. In 1816–19 he and Edward Cresy (1792–1858) travelled in England, France, Italy, Greece, Malta, and Sicily, after which they published The Architectural Antiquities of Rome… (1821–2 and 1874) and The Architecture of the Middle Ages in Italy… (1829), an early work extolling Italian medieval architecture. In 1824 Taylor was appointed Civil Architect to the Navy, and carried out robust and virile works at the dockyards of Chatham, Sheerness, and Woolwich. He was responsible for the fine Clarence Victualling Yard, Gosport, Hants. (1828–32). In the 1840s he laid out a large part of the Bishop of London's Estate in Paddington (e.g. Chester Place and parts of Hyde Park and Gloucester Squares). He published Stones of Etruria and Marbles of Ancient Rome (1859). His most extraordinary work is the huge Gothic Revival tower of Hadlow Castle, Kent (c.1840), a folly to almost rival Wyatt's Fonthill in extravagance, and he pioneered the modern use of concrete as a building material in the Proprietary School, Lee, Kent (1836), modelled on the Propylaea in Athens.
Bibliography
Colvin (1995);
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004);
W. Papworth (1892)
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Taylor, George Ledwell