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Charles Robert Cockerell

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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CHARLES ROBERT COCKERELL (1788-1863), British architect, was born in London on the 28th of April 1788. After a preliminary training in his profession, he went abroad in 1810 and studied the great architectural remains of Greece, Italy and Asia Minor. At Aegina, Phigalia and other places of interest, he conducted excavations on a large scale, enriching the British Museum with many fine fragments, and adding several valuable monographs to the literature of archaeology. Elected in 1829 an associate of the Royal Academy, he became a full member in 1836, and in 1839 he was appointed professor of architecture. On Sir John Soane's death in 1837 Cockerell was appointed architect of the Bank of England, and carried out the alterations that were judged to be necessary in that building. In addition to branch banks at Liverpool and Manchester he erected in 1840 the new library at Cambridge, and in 1845 the university galleries at Oxford, as well as the Sun and the Westminster Fire Offices in Bartholomew Lane and in the Strand; and he was joint architect of the London & Westminster Bank, Lothbury, with Sir W. Tite. On the death of Henry Lonsdale Elmes in 1847, Cockerell was selected to finish the St George's Hall, Liverpool. Cockerell's best conceptions were those inspired by classic models; his essays in the Gothic - the college at Lampeter, for instance, and the chapel at Harrow - are by no means so successful. His thorough knowledge of Gothic art, however, can be seen from his writings, On the Iconography of Wells Cathedral, and On the Sculptures of Lincoln and Exeter Cathedrals. In his Tribute to the Memory of Sir Christopher Wren (1838) he published an interesting collection of the whole of Wren's works drawn to one scale.