John Carter (architect) facts for kids

John Carter (1748–1817) was an English draughtsman and architect, who was an early advocate of the revival of Gothic architecture.

Life

Carter was born on 22 June 1748, the son of Benjamin Carter (d.1766), a marble-carver established in Piccadilly in the West End of London; his father's brother Thomas (d.1795) was also in business as a sculptor of marble. At an early age he was sent to a boarding-school at Battersea, and then to one in Kennington Lane. Leaving school aged about twelve, he went home to his father, making working drawings for the men. In about 1764, following his father's death, Carter was taken into the office of a Joseph Dixon, a surveyor and mason, with whom he remained for some years.

In 1774 he was employed to execute drawings of St. Paul's Churchyard for the Builders Magazine, edited by Francis Newbery, for which he was to continue to draw until 1786. Between 1775 and 1778 he published almost 30 designs for Gothic buildings in the magazine. He insisted that the Gothic was the correct style for ecclesiastical structures, Classical modes being only suitable for "mansions and other structures of ease and pleasure".

In 1780, on the recommendation of Michael Lort, Carter was employed by the Society of Antiquaries to do some drawing and etching. He was elected a fellow of the society in March 1795, and then worked as its draughtsman. In 1780 he had drawn for Richard Gough, later a patron, the west front of Croyland Abbey Church and other subjects, in Gough's Sepulchral Monuments and other works. From 1781 Carter also met other patrons and friends, among whom were John Soane, John Milner, Sir Henry Charles Englefield, William Bray, Sir Richard Colt Hoare, the Earl of Exeter, and Horace Walpole.

Carter's drawings of Lea Castle

Architectural work

Carter built little as an architect. A significant work however was Milner Hall, the Catholic chapel at Winchester, commissioned in 1791–2 by the priest John Milner following the Second Relief Act, which allowed the erection of Roman Catholic places of worship, on the condition that they were without steeples and bells. Entered through a Norman gateway salvaged from a demolished church, the chapel, stuccoed in imitation of stone, had details and furnishings imitated from various Perpendicular models.

Death

Towards the autumn of 1816 his health began to decline. In the spring of the following year dropsy made its appearance, and he died in Upper Eaton Street, Pimlico, on 8 September 1817, aged 69. He was buried at Hampstead, an inscribed stone to his memory being placed on the south side of the church. His collection, including drawings and antiquities, was sold by auction at Sotheby's on 26 February 1818.