George Wightwick


George Wightwick was a British architect based in Plymouth, and possibly the first architectural journalist.
In addition to his architectural practice, he developed his skills and the market for architectural journalism. His views of church design disagreed with those of churchmen with power to commission new churches and this work dropped off after he published his ideas in Weale's Quarterly papers on Architecture in 1844/5. He married twice but had no children and died at Portishead on 9 July 1872.

Life and work

Early years

Wightwick was born in Alyn Bank, near Mold, Flintshire, Wales and trained in London under Edward Lapidge. Following a year of travel and study in Italy, he published Select Views of Roman Antiquities .

Plymouth

In the late 1820s, Wightwick moved to Plymouth, and worked with John Foulston, succeeding to Foulston's practice after six months. From then until 1852, when he retired to Bristol, he completed many public and domestic buildings, mostly in Plymouth, Devon and Cornwall.
Wightwick, who was a member of The Plymouth Institution, was well known in Plymouth as an architect and as an amateur actor and comedian.
He completed designs by Foulston for Bodmin County Lunatic Asylum and designed the Plymouth Mechanics' Institute, Athenaeum Terrace, the Esplanade, the Devon and Cornwall Female Orphan Asylum and the Post Office at Devonport.
In Devon, he designed Calverleigh Court, and Watermouth Castle, near Ilfracombe.

Work in Cornwall

Among the buildings that he designed in Cornwall were country houses at Luxtowe in Liskeard and Trevarno, near Helston, Penquite at Golant and alterations to Tregrehan House at St. Blazey.
In The Buildings of England: Cornwall, Nikolaus Pevsner identifies as Wightwick's work St. Michael and All Angels, Bude, St. Mary's at Portreath Probus Vicarage , St. Luke's, Tideford, and Tregrehan House near St. Blazey, and St. John's, Treslothan.
Raymond L. Brett has identified Wightwick as the architect of the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society building in Falmouth.

Networking

The ODNB articles relate how Wightwick used his social networking skills to develop his practice. An example of this is his relationship with the Fox family of Falmouth, as described by siblings Barclay and Caroline, who both kept journals which were published in the 1970s. Barclay Fox notes the brilliant lecture that Wightwick gave at the Polytechnic: "The Romance of Architecture" ; their companionship at the meeting of the British Association in Plymouth ; and his visit to the new Bodmin Lunatic Asylum with Wightwick . Caroline Fox describes Wightwick's witty tabletalk, when he dined at Penjerrick, the Fox family home ; her attendance at a lecture he gave ; and news that he would move to Clifton. Through this long period, Wightwick kept contact with this family of "opinion-formers" and powerful social networkers.

Writings

His first work was Select Views of Roman Antiquities. After his retirement from architectural practice, he continued his writing about architecture, both in the Bristol papers and the national professional press.
Books by "George Wightwick, Architect" held by the British Library