William Milford Teulon (30 May 1823 – 23 June 1900, Leamington) was an

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

architect An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...

and landscape designer. Teulon was born in 1823 in

Greenwich Greenwich ( , ,) is a town in south-east London, England, within the ceremonial county of Greater London. It is situated east-southeast of Charing Cross. Greenwich is notable for its maritime history and for giving its name to the Greenwich ...

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

, the son of a cabinet-maker from a French

Huguenot The Huguenots ( , also , ) were a religious group of French Protestants who held to the Reformed, or Calvinist, tradition of Protestantism. The term, which may be derived from the name of a Swiss political leader, the Genevan burgomaster Be ...

family. He followed his elder brother

Samuel Sanders Teulon Samuel Sanders Teulon (2 March 1812 – 2 May 1873) was an English Gothic Revival architect, noted for his use of polychrome brickwork and the complex planning of his buildings. Family Teulon was born in 1812 in Greenwich, Kent, the son of a ...

(1812–1873) in becoming an architect. He travelled across continental Europe 1847–48.

Commissions

He designed the park and gardens of

Gunton Hall Gunton Hall, Gunton Park, is a large country house near Suffield in Norfolk. History The estate belonged to the Gunton family in the 12th century, to the Berney family in the 16th century and later to the Jermyn family. The current house was bu ...

Norfolk Norfolk () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in East Anglia in England. It borders Lincolnshire to the north-west, Cambridgeshire to the west and south-west, and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the No ...

and did similar work at

Althorp Althorp (popularly pronounced ) is a Grade I listed stately home and estate in the civil parish of Althorp, in West Northamptonshire, England of about . By road it is about northwest of the county town of Northampton and about northwest of c ...

and Overstone Park. William Teulon's only identified original archirectural work was the design and execution of a substantial country house and ancillary buildings such as the coach house and stables at Overstone

Northamptonshire Northamptonshire (; abbreviated Northants.) is a county in the East Midlands of England. In 2015, it had a population of 723,000. The county is administered by two unitary authorities: North Northamptonshire and West Northamptonshire. It is ...

for Samuel Jones Loyd in 1862-4. Chiefly the house was Lady Overstone's idea. In his published Correspondence Lord Overstone decried the design and the architect alike. "We have fallen into the hands of an architect whose incapacity is the least of his faults," he wrote to a friend in 1863. His wife died while the house was nearing completion in 1864. Consequently he lived out much of the remainder of his life at

Lockinge House The Lockinge Estate is a agricultural and housing estate near Wantage that today includes most of the land and property encompassing the villages of West Lockinge, East Lockinge and Ardington. The current manager of the Lockinge Estate is Thomas ...

Berkshire Berkshire ( ; in the 17th century sometimes spelt phonetically as Barkeshire; abbreviated Berks.) is a historic county in South East England. One of the home counties, Berkshire was recognised by Queen Elizabeth II as the Royal County of Berk ...

, the home of his daughter Harriet and her husband Robert Lindsay V.C., later made Lord (and Lady) Wantage in 1885. Overstone House was on the receiving end of much critical opprobrium from at least two noted architectural historians,

Nikolaus Pevsner Sir Nikolaus Bernhard Leon Pevsner (30 January 1902 – 18 August 1983) was a German-British art historian and architectural historian best known for his monumental 46-volume series of county-by-county guides, ''The Buildings of England'' (1 ...

in his ''

Buildings of England The Pevsner Architectural Guides are a series of guide books to the architecture of Great Britain and Ireland. Begun in the 1940s by the art historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, the 46 volumes of the original Buildings of England series were published b ...

'' ''Northamptonshire'' ("a house of many styles..

hich Ij ( fa, ايج, also Romanized as Īj; also known as Hich and Īch) is a village in Golabar Rural District, in the Central District of Ijrud County, Zanjan Province, Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also ...

. almost defeats description" and "a terrible bastard Renaissance house"), and

Mark Girouard Mark Girouard (7 October 1931 – 16 August 2022) was a British architectural historian. He was an authority on the country house, and Elizabethan and Victorian architecture. Life and career Girouard was born on 7 October 1931. He was educ ...

in ''The Victorian Country House'', Yale University Press 1979 ("drearily asymmetrical" – the full text deserves reading). It was listed by the Department of the Environment (now the

Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport , type = Department , logo = Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport logo.svg , logo_width = , logo_caption = , seal = , seal_width = , seal_caption = , picture = Gove ...

) at Grade II in 1983, principally for its then – 1860s – relatively novel cavity-wall construction. The House was all but destroyed by fire on 21 April 2001. It is still a roofless ruin in 2019, several schemes for its rehabilitation having fallen through. There is a current planning application for reconstruction and conversion to 14 apartments pending at

Daventry District Council Daventry ( , historically ) is a market town and civil parish in the West Northamptonshire unitary authority in Northamptonshire, England, close to the border with Warwickshire. At the 2021 Census Daventry had a population of 28,123, making ...

Church restoration

Teulon founded the City Church and Churchyard Protection Society. He was involved in the restoration of a number of churches including

St Matthias Old Church St Matthias Old Church is the modern name given to the Poplar Chapel built by the East India Company in 1654, in Poplar in the East End of London. The church is designated a Grade II* listed building. St Matthias Old Church is one of the ver ...

, where the

puritan The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to purify the Church of England of Catholic Church, Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully reformed and should become m ...

character of this

Commonwealth A commonwealth is a traditional English term for a political community founded for the common good. Historically, it has been synonymous with "republic". The noun "commonwealth", meaning "public welfare, general good or advantage", dates from the ...

church was altered through cladding in Kentish Ragstone and the removal of the preaching box.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Teulon, William Milford 1823 births 1900 deaths English architects