'Charles Robert Cockerell' (
1788–
1863) was an English
architect,
archaeologist, and
writer. Early in his life, he trained in the architectural practice of his father,
Samuel Pepys Cockerell. One of his earliest jobs found Cockerell assisting
Robert Smirke in rebuilding the Covent Garden Theatre (a forerunner of today's
Royal Opera House). He set up his own practice in 1817 and became relatively successful, winning the first
Royal Gold Medal for architecture in 1848 and becoming president of the
Royal Institute of British Architects in 1860.
As an archaeologist, Cockerell is remembered for discovering the
reliefs from the temple of Apollo at
Bassae, near
Phigalia, which are now in the
British Museum. Replicas of these reliefs were included in the frieze of the library of the
Travellers Club, of which Charles Robert Cockerell was a founding committee member in 1819.
With
Jacques Ignace Hittorff and
Thomas Leverton Donaldson, Cockerell was also a member of the committee formed in 1836 to determine whether the
Elgin Marbles and other Greek statuary in the
British Museum had originally been coloured (see Transactions of the Royal Institute of British Architects for 1842).
The
Royal Academy of Arts composed a brief commemorative biography of Cockerell, including the following sentiment which speaks to his great work as a student of architecture:
:''"At the heart of Cockerell's emotional experience of the power of the antique to fire the imagination lay an extraordinary visual sensitivity to the mass and volume of the components of architecture, which for him were never mere abstract, weightless forms or quotations borrowed from the past, but acted together as a constantly renewable expression of man's innate need to create beauty on earth."''
Notable Buildings
★
1822-
1827 - The Saint David's Building,
University of Wales, Lampeter.
★
1824-
1829 - The
National Monument, Edinburgh.
★
1829 -
Church of Holy Trinity, Hotwells,
Bristol
★ 1835 - The
Bank of England, Courtney Street,
Plymouth.
★ 1838 - London & Westminster Bank, Lothbury, London (with
William Tite).
★
1839-
1845 - The
Ashmolean Museum and
Taylor Institution,
Oxford University.
★
1844-
1847 - The
Bank of England, Bristol.
★ 1845 - The
Bank of England,
King Street, Manchester.
★
1845-
1848 -
Bank of England, Liverpool.
★
1848 -
Fitzwilliam Museum,
Cambridge University.
★
1851-
1854 - The
Bank of England, Castle Street,
Liverpool.
★
1854 -
St. George’s Hall, Liverpool.
External links
★ http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/speel/arch/cockerel.htm
★ http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/people/A0812735.html
★
Cockerell and the Grand Tour