Batty Langley
Batty Langley (baptised 14 September 1696 – 3 March 1751) was an English garden designer, and prolific writer who produced a number of engraved designs for "Gothick" structures, summerhouses and garden seats in the years before the mid-18th century.
An eccentric
Early life
Langley was baptised in Twickenham, Middlesex, the son of a jobbing gardener Daniel Langley and his wife Elizabeth. He bore the name of David Batty, one of his father's patrons. He started worked as a gardener, inheriting some of his father's clients in Twickenham, then a village of suburban villas within easy reach of London by a pleasant water journey on the Thames. An early client was Thomas Vernon of Twickenham Park.
He married Anne Smith in February 1719. They had four children, but she died in June 1726. He had ten further children with his second wife, Catherine.
Landscape gardening
Langley moved into surveying and
For the
His New Principles of Gardening (1728) included designs for mazes, a feature he could never quite leave behind, with 28 plates engraved by his brother Thomas. He also published A Sure Method of Improving Estates (1728) and Pomona (1729).
He also undertook work at Castle Howard in North Yorkshire and Wrest Park in Bedfordshire.
Architecture
Langley moved from Twickenham to London in 1729, and shifted again from landscape gardening to architecture. Working near
Despite his literary aspirations, and advertisements in architectural journals, he secured few commissions, submitting an unsolicited proposal for the competition to design a new
He published a wide range of architectural books, from a huge folio on Ancient Masonry in parts from 1733 to 1736 with over 450 plates, through The Builder's Complete Assistant of 1738 (also known as The Builder's Complete Chest-Book) and The Builder's Jewel of 1741, to the tiny The Workman's Golden Rule in 1750, in vicesimo-quarto.
He is best known for one of his confident self-promotions, Ancient Architecture, Restored, and Improved published in 1742 and reissued in 1747 as Gothic Architecture, improved by Rules and Proportions, a bit of cockscombry that thoroughly irritated
All that his books achieved, has been to teach carpenters to massacre that venerable species, and to give occasion to those who know nothing of the matter, and who mistake his clumsy efforts for real imitations, to censure the productions of our ancestors, whose bold and beautiful fabrics Sir Christopher Wren viewed and reviewed with astonishment, and never mentioned without esteem. (Walpole, Anecdotes of Painting, 1798, p 484)
His book, with engravings by his brother Thomas, attempted to improve Gothic forms by giving them classical proportions and to create a scheme of architectural orders for Gothic architecture. He provided inspiration for elements of buildings from Great Fulford and Hartland Abbey in Devon, to Speedwell Castle in Brewood in Staffordshire, and Tissington Hall in Derbyshire, and the Gothic temple at Bramham Park in Yorkshire, and gates at Castletown House in County Kildare.
Langley's books were also enormously influential in Britain's American colonies. At Mount Vernon, for example, George Washington relied upon plate 51 of Langley's The City and Country Builder's and Workman's Treasury of Designs as the source for the famous Venetian (or Palladian) window in the dining room; upon plate 54 of the same book for the ocular window on Mount Vernon's western facade; and upon plate 75 of Langley's The Builder's Jewel for the rusticated wood siding.[1]
Batty Langley was also thought to be an important
He was imprisoned for debt in Newgate Prison and wrote an account of that institution, An Accurate Description of Newgate.[3] He died at home in Soho.[4]
References
- ^ The Center for Palladian Studies in America, Inc., "Palladio and Architectural Patternbooks in Colonial America." Archived 2009-12-23 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ See Eileen Harris, Batty Langley: A Tutor to Freemasons (1696-1751), The Burlington Magazine, Vol.119, No 890, May 1977
- ^ An Accurate Description of Newgate at Google Books
- doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/16022. Retrieved 11 October 2009. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- The Twickenham Museum: Batty Langley
- University of Rochester Book of the Month: Batty Langley, New Principles of Gardening, 1728. Detailed illustrated report.
- "Batty Langley: A Tutor to Freemasons (1696-1751)", Eileen Harris, The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 119, No. 890 (May 1977), pp. 327–333+335, Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/878768