Richard Carpenter (architect)

Richard Herbert Carpenter (1841–1893) was an eminent Victorian architect from England. While he designed many buildings working alone, he is best known for his collaboration with Benjamin Ingelow; their architectural practice, founded by Carpenter's father and based in Marylebone, London, was responsible for the restoration and construction of many ecclesiastical properties in the 19th century.

He was the son of the tractarian architect Richard Cromwell Carpenter. Carpenter began his architectural career working with his late father's partner William Slater, in the early stages of his life Carpenter was heavily influenced by the dictates of the Cambridge Movement of architecture to which his father had adhered. Following Slater's death in 1872, Carpenter worked either alone or with Ingelow.

Carpenter worked as architect to Ardingly College following the school's purchase of a convert|196|acre|km2|sing=on site at Ardingly in 1862. In 1872 Carpenter was responsible for the design of the pulpit at Jesus Church, Forty Hill, Enfield, Middlesex, this one of Carpenter's earliest designs, led to a greater commission in 1874 a complete church at Enfield, St. Michael and All Angels. This Gothic style stone church has a clerestory with double lancet windows. The altar in the chancel is recessed into polygonal vaulted apse in the Byzantine style with stone reredos depicting the Crucifixion.

Richard Carpenter is perhaps best remembered today for the recreation of Holdenby House this large country house in Northamptonshire had originally been built in the sixteenth century by Sir Christopher Hatton, Lord Chancellor to Queen Elizabeth I; one of the largest and grandest houses in England, it had been subsequently sold to James I and became a royal palace. Following the Civil War it had been mostly demolished. In 1873 Carpenter was employed by the owner Viscountess Clifden to recreate the Elizabethan house incorporating the little that remained of it. Although Carpenter's house was only an eighth the size of the former palace, the completed Elizabethan-style mansion was an architectural success. The many gabled stone new house, with tall ornamental chimneys and mullioned windows was approached through the original tripartite arches of the former palace. In 1887 Carpenter returned to Holdenby to design the great panelled entrance hall. It is at Holdenby, away from the ecclesiastical Gothic, that Carpenter's versatility of style as an architect can truly be seen.

By 1875 Carpenter was again working in Northamptonshire, this time working in a thirteenth-century design on the new chancel at the church of St. Margaret Luddington-in-the-Brook. A large project in 1877 was the full scale restoration of the church of St. Mary the Virgin at Goudhurst, Kent. This included the building of the vestry and a large part of the south aisle. Carpenter, working in 1865 with William Slater, who had been in partnership with his father, had prepared the plans for an earlier restoration of this church.

In 1884 Carpenter and Ingelow received an important commission to design what is today known as the Chapel Court at Jesus College, Cambridge. Working with red brick, the court with a central castellated tower blends harmoniously with its surroundings.

A disappointment to the partnership in 1888 was the rejection of their plans in a competition to design Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, New York: the eventual winners were the New York firm of Heins and Lafarge with a Romanesque, Byzantine design similar in style to the works of Carpenter and Ingelow. The church of St. Mary and All Saints, Willingham, was one of the last restorations by the partnership, completed in 1891. Carpenter died in 1893 aged 52.

External links

*Jesus College: [http://www.cambridge2000.com/cambridge2000/html/0003/P3190307.html]
*Holdenby House: [http://www.holdenby.com/]
*Enfield Churches [http://www.saintmarymagdalene.org.uk/section/37]