John Carr (architect)


John Carr was a prolific English architect, best known for Buxton Crescent in Derbyshire and Harewood House in West Yorkshire. Much of his work was in the Palladian style. In his day he was considered to be the leading architect in the north of England.

Life

He was born in Horbury, near Wakefield, England, the eldest of nine children and the son of a master mason, under whom he trained. He started an independent career in 1748 and continued until shortly before his death. John Carr was Lord Mayor of York in 1770 and 1785. Towards the end of his life Carr purchased an estate at Askham Richard, near York, to which he retired. On 22 February 1807 he died at Askham Hall. He was buried in St Peter and St Leonard's Church, Horbury, which he had designed and paid for.

Career

Carr decided to remain in Yorkshire rather than move to London because he calculated that there was ample patronage and the wealth to sustain it. No job was too small. His largest work, only partially finished, was the :pt:Hospital de Santo António|Hospital de Santo António in Oporto, Portugal. In order to maximise his income, he kept his staff to the minimum. His earliest assistant was William Lindley, who from 1774 developed an independent practice. He was followed by the elder Peter Atkinson and possibly his son Peter the younger. Carr's nephew William Carr also assisted his uncle in his latter years. These architectural assistants had 'boys' to help them in turn. Carr rarely delegated matters that others would regard as too trivial, and in consequence Carr had to travel immense distances mostly on horse back. However the frequency of such visits brought him into regular contact with his many clients to mutual advantage.
Carr’s own favourite work was the Crescent at Buxton in Derbyshire, an early example of multifunctional architecture. As well as hotels and lodging houses, it contained Assembly Rooms, shops, a post office and a public promenade all under one roof. On a smaller scale, the same is true of his Newark Town Hall.
Other public buildings included hospitals, racecourse grandstands,, and prisons at Wakefield and Northallerton. He designed new churches as well as repairing old ones. The former were all privately financed, the latter were financed by the existing parishes. His single span roof construction allowed him to build the new churches without the traditional subdivision into nave and aisles.
He served as bridgemaster for both the North and West Ridings of Yorkshire, leaving a legacy of countless bridges the majority of which still stand today. The more than 60 bridges built or altered by Carr still serve the backbone of North Yorkshire's road transport network. Carr was Lord Mayor of York in 1770 and 1785.
His commissions for country houses included model villages and farms, stable blocks, a variety of gate lodges and gateways, garden temples and other ornamental buildings. Notable among them his works for the estates of Harewood and Wentworth Woodhouse.
He took particular care with their planning and construction to maximise value for money for both the immediate patron and for the buildings' future long-term maintenance. He used traditional materials and methods of construction where these had proved sound, but adopted new methods and materials where these could be shown to have an advantage. His training as a stonemason naturally led him to build in that material. In particular he enjoyed using 'great' stones as at Tabley House. He liked well proportioned rooms which were satisfactory living spaces with or without decorative enrichment. In his view the latter could be provided later if money permitted. As a result, most of his buildings were completed and because of the soundness of construction most survive.
Among the buildings accessible in whole or part to the public today are Buxton Crescent, Newark Town Hall, virtually all his bridges, Harewood House, Tabley House, Clifton House, Lytham Hall and Fairfax House at 27 Castlegate York, now the headquarters of York Civic Trust.

Influences

During his long career there were several major changes in architectural style. His early work is a mixture of the Palladian and the Rococo. He then sought a purer Antique Roman style with occasional French influences before adapting the currently fashionable style associated with Robert Adam. At the end of his life he returned to the bolder Palladian style of his youth but with detail that looked forward to 19th-century usage.
Carr's work was influenced by the books of Sebastiano Serlio and Andrea Palladio. He subscribed to many architectural pattern books, including those of his friend George Richardson, and also contemporary publications by Robert Morris and William Chambers.

List of works

Public buildings

in chronological order, county given if not Yorkshire

North and East Ridings of Yorkshire