William Burges (; 2 December 1827 – 20 April 1881) was an English architect and designer. Among the greatest of the Victorian art-architects, he sought in his work to escape from both nineteenth-century industrialisation and the Neoclassical architectural style and re-establish the architectural and social values of a utopian medieval England. Burges stands within the tradition of the Gothic Revival, his works echoing those of the Pre-Raphaelites and heralding those of the Arts and Crafts movement.
Burges won his first major commission for Saint Fin Barre's Cathedral in Cork in 1863 when he was 35. He died in 1881 at his Kensington home, The Tower House aged only 53. His architectural output was small but varied. Working with a long-standing team of craftsmen, he built churches, a cathedral, a warehouse, a university, a school, houses and castles. Burges's most notable works are Cardiff Castle, constructed between 1866 and 1928, and Castell Coch (1872–1891), both of which were built for John Crichton-Stuart, 3rd Marquess of Bute. Other significant buildings include Gayhurst House, Buckinghamshire (1858–1865), Knightshayes Court (1867–1874), the Church of Christ the Consoler (1870–1876), St Mary's, Studley Royal (1870–1878), in Yorkshire, and Park House, Cardiff (1871–1880).
Many of his designs were never executed or were subsequently demolished or altered. His competition entries for cathedrals at Lille (1854), Adelaide (1856), Colombo, Brisbane (1859), Edinburgh (1873), and Truro (1878) were all unsuccessful. He lost out to George Edmund Street in the competition for the Royal Courts of Justice (1866–67) in The Strand. His plans for the redecoration of the interior of St Paul's Cathedral (1870–1877) were abandoned and he was dismissed from his post. Skilbeck's Warehouse (1865–66) was demolished in the 1970s, and work at Salisbury Cathedral (1855–1859), Worcester College, Oxford (1873–1879), and at Knightshayes Court had been lost in the decades before.
Beyond architecture, Burges designed metalwork, sculpture, jewellery, furniture and stained glass. Art Applied to Industry, a series of lectures he gave to the Society of Arts in 1864, illustrates the breadth of his interests; the topics covered including glass, pottery, brass and iron, gold and silver, furniture, the weaver's art and external architectural decoration. For most of the century following his death, Victorian architecture was neither the subject of intensive study nor sympathetic attention and Burges's work was largely ignored. The revival of interest in Victorian art, architecture, and design in the later twentieth century led to a renewed appreciation of Burges and his work.
Burges was born on 2 December 1827, the son of Alfred Burges (1796–1886), a wealthy civil engineer. Alfred amassed a considerable fortune, which enabled his son to devote his life to the study and practice of architecture without requiring that he actually earn a living.
Burges entered King's College School, London, in 1839 to study engineering, his contemporaries there including Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Michael Rossetti. He left in 1844 to join the office of Edward Blore, surveyor to Westminster Abbey. Blore was an established architect, having worked for both William IV and Queen Victoria, and had made his reputation as a proponent of the Gothic Revival. In 1848 or 1849, Burges moved to the offices of Matthew Digby Wyatt. Wyatt was as prominent an architect as Blore, evidenced by his leading role in the direction of The Great Exhibition in 1851. Burges's work with Wyatt, particularly on the Medieval Court for this exhibition, was influential on the subsequent course of his career. During this period, he also worked on drawings of medieval metalwork for Wyatt's book, Metalwork, published in 1852, and assisted Henry Clutton with illustrations for his works.
Of equal importance to Burges's subsequent career was his travelling. Burges believed that all architects should travel, remarking that it was "absolutely necessary to see how various art problems have been resolved in different ages by different men." Enabled by his private income, Burges moved through England, then France, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Germany, Spain, Italy, Greece and finally into Turkey. In total, he spent some 18 months abroad developing his skills and knowledge by sketching and drawing. What he saw and drew provided a repository of influences and ideas that he used and re-used for the whole of his career.
Although he never went beyond Turkey, the art and architecture of the East, both Near and Far, had a significant impact on him; his fascination with Moorish design found ultimate expression in the Arab Room at Cardiff Castle, and his study of Japanese techniques influenced his later metalwork. Burges received his first important commission at the age of 35, but his subsequent career did not see the development that might have been expected. His style had already been formed over the previous twenty years of study, thinking and travelling. J. Mordaunt Crook, the foremost authority on Burges, writes that, "once established, after twenty years' preparation, his 'design language' had merely to be applied, and he applied and reapplied the same vocabulary with increasing subtlety and gusto."
In 1856 Burges established his own architectural practice in London at 15 Buckingham Street, The Strand. Some of his early pieces of furniture were created for this office and were later moved to The Tower House, Melbury Road, Kensington, the home he built for himself towards the end of his life. His early architectural career produced nothing of major note, although he won prestigious commissions, which remained unbuilt, for Lille Cathedral, the Crimea Memorial Church and the Bombay School of Art.
His failed entry for the Law Courts in the Strand, if successful, would have given London its own Carcassonne, the plans being described by the architectural writers Dixon and Muthesius as "a recreation of a thirteenth-century dream world [with] a skyline of great inventiveness." In 1859, he submitted a French-inspired design for St John's Cathedral in Brisbane, Australia, which was rejected. He also provided designs for Colombo Cathedral in Ceylon and St Francis Xavier's Cathedral, Adelaide, without success.
In 1855, however, he obtained a commission for the reconstruction of the chapter house of Salisbury Cathedral. Henry Clutton was the lead architect but Burges, as assistant, contributed to the restoration of the sculpture and to the general decorative scheme. Much was lost in restorations of the 1960s. More lasting was Burges's work of 1858 onwards in the substantial remodelling of Gayhurst House, in Buckinghamshire, for Robert Carrington, 2nd Baron Carrington. Rooms there contain some of his large signature fireplaces, with carving by Burges's long-time collaborator Thomas Nicholls, in particular those in the Drawing Room which include motifs from Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. He also designed a circular lavatory for the male servants, the Cerberus Privy, which Jeremy Cooper describes as being "surmounted by a growling Cerberus, each of his three heads inset with bloodshot glass eyes."
In 1859 Burges began work with Ambrose Poynter on the Maison Dieu, Dover, which was completed in 1861. Emulation of the original medieval style can be seen in his renovation of the grotesque animals and in the coats of arms incorporated into his new designs. Burges later designed the Council Chamber, added in 1867, and in 1881 began work on Connaught Hall in Dover, a town meeting and concert hall. The new building contained meeting rooms and mayoral and official offices. Although Burges designed the project, most of it was completed after his death by his partners, Pullan and Chapple. The listed status of the Maison Dieu was reclassified as Grade I in 2017 and Dover District Council, the building's owner, is seeking grant funding to enable a restoration, focussing on Burges's work.