John Webb

John Webb (1611 – 24 October 1672) was an English architect and scholar, who collaborated on some works with Inigo Jones.

Life He was born in Little Britain, Smithfield, London, and died in Butleigh in Somerset. He had a close association with fellow architect and theatre designer Inigo Jones, for whom he worked as an assistant from 1628. Webb married Anne Jones who was described as a "kinswoman" of Inigo Jones. Webb included some details of Jones's career in his two books about Stonehenge.

In the 1640s and 1650s, Jones and Webb jointly designed Wilton House (near Salisbury, Wiltshire) with its distinctive Single and Double Cube rooms.

Webb's earliest known drawings were made for the Barber Surgeons' Hall in London in 1636–7, and in 1638 he designed a lodge for John Penruddock at Hale in Hampshire and stables for a Mr Featherstone, but it is unclear if these were built.

Upon Jones' death in 1652, Webb inherited a substantial fortune as well as a library of drawings and designs, many of which dated back to Jones' influential travels to Italy. In the Corinthian style, this portico stamps this older house as Palladian, 50 years before the birth of Lord Burlington.

In the early 1660s Charles II commissioned Webb to rebuild Greenwich Palace in a more contemporary Baroque style. His plan was for three ranges around a courtyard, open on the north side towards the Thames. The buildings were to be aligned with Inigo Jones' Queen's House, which stands a little way further south from the river, just short of the current northern boundary of Greenwich Park. The old buildings were demolished, but only one block of Webb's design was built; constructed between 1664 and 1669, it was never occupied by the royal family, and was later incorporated into Christopher Wren's designs for Greenwich Hospital, where it forms the eastern part of the King Charles Block. Webb also designed the enlargement of the Queen's House in 1662.

Further afield they also share a connection with Kingston Lacy, a stately home in Dorset where Webb supervised early works (c. 1660) on the building, following designs originally prepared by Jones.

Webb also designed the rebuild of Belvoir Castle in Leicestershire between 1654 and 1668, and made alterations to Northumberland House, a large London townhouse. He also designed Gunnersbury House in Ealing.

Legacy Webb's surviving drawings, more than 200 in number, are held by Worcester College, Oxford, the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), and Chatsworth House. Webb may have been working towards a publication on the classical orders.

Main works

Gallery of architectural works