Roger Morris (1695-1749)

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Marble Hill House, with Lord Pembroke, 1724-29: prototype of many English villas and colonial mansions
Marble Hill House, with Lord Pembroke, 1724-29: prototype of many English villas and colonial mansions

Roger Morris (London, 19 April 1695 — 31 January 1749)[1] was an English architect whose connection with Colen Campbell[2] brought him to the attention of Henry Herbert, 9th Earl of Pembroke, with whom Morris collaborated on a long series of projects.

Morris received thorough practical training as a bricklayer, as he was described in 1724, when he built a house for himself on the Harley estate in Oxford Street, London, but by 1730, in a larger house he built for himself in Green Street, he was described in the rates as a 'gentleman'.[3] On his own account he was successfully involved in speculative building in London, which may have supported his position in life.

The Blenheim Column of Victory, with Lord Pembroke, 1732-33
The Blenheim Column of Victory, with Lord Pembroke, 1732-33

Professionally his career was closely bound at first with Sir Andrew Fountaine, a virtuoso and amateur architect, at Narford, and then to Colen Campbell, to whom he seems to have acted as assistant, as at Studley Royal in Yorkshire,[4] and Lord Pembroke, one of the 'architect earls'. Lord Pembroke's connoisseurship combined with Morris's practical experience produced Marble Hill House (illustration, above right) for Henrietta Howard, Countess of Suffolk, 1724-29; the White Lodge, Richmond 1727-28;[5] and, after Morris's tour to Italy with George Bubb Dodington (June 1731 - September 1732),[6] the Column of Victory, Blenheim Palace (illustrated, left) for Marlborough's widow, Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, 1732-33; Wimbledon House, 1732-33, also for the Duchess; the Palladian Bridge, Wilton House, 1736-37; and probably, Howard Colvin suggests, Westcombe House, Blackheath, near London, (ca 1730) which became Pembroke's own.[7] Lord Pembroke presented Morris with a silver cup in 1734 as a token of his regard for him.[8]

The White Lodge, Richmond Park (with Lord Pembroke), 1727-28
The White Lodge, Richmond Park (with Lord Pembroke), 1727-28

Morris's ability and the recommendations of his well-placed patrons secured him a post in the Office of Works, from which all designs for the Crown emanated. The new office of Clerk of the Works at Richmond New Park Lodge was created for him in 1727, when he was engaged in building the structure. In 1734 he succeeded in the post of Master Carpenter to the Office of Ordnance,[9] which was worth £2 or £3000 a year, for works at the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich and elsewhere.[10] He was also appointed Surveyor to the Mint.[11]

John Morris's Palladian villa in town, at 12, Grosvenor Square (1727, for John Aislabie) has been thoroughly dissected by the Survey of London[12] Morris's independent designs are not pale exercises in Palladianism by any means. "His villas, for example, were, and are, strikingly original in contrast to Campbell's," John Harris has observed,[13] "and Carné's Seat at Goodwood characterises the individual style Morris bestowed upon temple buildings." John Harris has demonstrated that Morris made a design for the Porter's Lodge at Wilton House,ca. 1733.[14]

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Dates, and much of the other information in this article, are from Howard Colvin, A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600-1840, 3rd ed. (Yale University Press) 1995, s.v. "Roger Morris".
  2. ^ "He was Campbell's assistant through the 1720s," John Harris remarked, noting Morris's drawing of Campbell's design for Pembroke House, Whitehall, of 1723, in the Wilton archives (Harris, "An English Neo-Palladian Episode and Its Connections with Visentini in Venice" Architectural History 27 ["Design and Practice in British Architecture: Studies in Architectural History Presented to Howard Colvin", 1984:231-240] p. 232).
  3. ^ Colvin 1995.
  4. ^ Colvin notes archival drawings by or attributed by Morris that are clkosely related to Campbell designs.
  5. ^ Nikolaus Pevsner says of the White Lodge's neo-Palladianism that it "shows the style at its worst in a mechanical imitation of one of Palladio-Burlington's ideas" (Pevsner, Surrey (The Buildings of England) 191971:55.
  6. ^ Harris 1984:233 notes a copy of a drawing by Morris of Casa Civena, Vicenza, and the "Mr Morris" noted next to George Bubb Dodington in Joseph Spence's list of English visitors at Florence; Morris completed the interiors of Sir John Vanbrugh's incomplete Eastbury House, Dorset for Bubb Dodington, 1733-38; the house was exploded and razed in 1775 (Francis J. B. Watson, "Roger Morris and Eastbury", Country Life correspondence 11 February 1949:317f; at a later date Morris designed and built a house at Hammersmith, near London, for Bubb Dodington; there a gallery was designed by Giovanni Niccolo Servandoni (Harris 1984:234).
  7. ^ John Harris found that "so closely does it adhereto the idiosyncratic style employed by Morris in his eseparate capacity as an architect from under Pembroke's umbrella, that it must have been designed by hi8m, rather than Pembroke" (Harris, "The Water Tower at Houghton, Norfolk" The Burlington Magazine 111 No. 794 (May 1969:300) Morris's designs at Coombe Bank, Kent, or whitton Park, Middlesex, for comparison.; Harris adduces
  8. ^ Preserved by Morris's descendents, it was discussed and illustrated in Country Life 31 October 1952, p. 1409; noted by Colvin 1995, loc. cit..
  9. ^ Colvin (loc. cit.) suggests that Morris owed this post to his patron and friend John Campbell, Duke of Argyll, for whom he had been extending Adderbury House, Oxfordshire
  10. ^ Colvin 1995, eo. loc..
  11. ^ Sir Andrew Fountaine had been appointed Warden of the Mint in 1727, Colvin notes.
  12. ^ F.H.W. Sheppard, ed., Survey of London, vol. XL: The Grosvenor Estate in London. Part II:The Buildings.
  13. ^ Harris1969:300.
  14. ^ Harris 1984:231f.