James Paine

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James Paine (1717-1789) was an English architect.

Essentially a Palladian, early in his career he was clerk of works at Nostell Priory. From the 1750s he had his own practice, and designed many villas, usually consisting of a central building, often with a fine staircase, and two symmetrical wings. The most important house which he was involved with was Kedleston Hall, Derbyshire where he succeeded Matthew Brettingham from 1759-1760 and suggested the colonnaded hall, but he was himself displaced by Robert Adam, who altered his designs. At around the same time he designed the very grand stables at Chatsworth House in the same county. From 1770-1776 he built Wardour Castle in Wiltshire (which featured as the Royal Ballet School in the film Billy Elliott).

Paine held various posts, some sinecures, in the Office of Works culminating in appointment as one of the two Architects of the Works in 1780 but lost the post in a reorganisation in 1782. His practice declined in his later years as he refused to participate in the neoclassical fashions established by the Adam brothers. He published much of his own work in his two volumes of Plans, elevations and sections of Noblemen and Gentlemen's Houses (1767 and 1783).