James Burrough

Sir James Burrough (1 September 1691 – 7 August 1764) was an English academic, antiquary, and amateur architect. He was Master of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and designed or refaced several of the buildings at the University of Cambridge in a Classical style.

Biography The son of James Burrough, M.D., of Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, he was born on 1 September 1691. Educated at the grammar school at Bury for eight years, he entered Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge in 1708. He proceeded to the degree of B.A. in 1711, and to that of M.A. in 1716. He was elected one of the esquire bedells in 1727, resigning the post in 1749. He was fellow of his college (on Mrs. Frankland's foundation) in 1738, and Master in 1754, an office which he held until his death on 7 August 1764. He was vice-chancellor in 1759. In 1721 he was added to a syndicate which had been appointed two years before to build the new Senate House. The following year he submitted a "Plan of the Intended Publick Buildings", which, as the minute-book of the syndic's records, the architect James Gibbs, who had been consulted, was requested to "take with him to London, and make what improvements he shall think necessary upon it". Gibbs was undoubtedly the architect of the existing building, the design being engraved in his published work, and Burrough's share in it was probably confined to general suggestions of style and arrangement. He also made plans to replace the library at Trinity Hall, which were not carried out. He built the doctors' gallery in Great St. Mary's Church, and then carried out a similar treatment on the court at Peterhouse (1754). His last work, a new chapel for Clare Hall (1763), was completed after his death by James Essex Burrough also designed the dining room at Sidney Sussex College, an 'elegant Rococo room' that emerged from the remodelling was seen as a way to attract students and Fellows at the College.

Besides these works, he was consulted about most of the changes underway in Cambridge and in 1757 he gave advice about a new bridge at Wisbech.