Elizabeth Wilbraham
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Elizabeth, Lady Wilbraham (née Mytton; 14 February 1632 – 27 July 1705) was a member of the English aristocracy, who traditionally has been identified as an important architectural patron. It has been suggested that she was the first woman
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 whose work may have been attributed to men. However, this is disputed by architectural historians.


Early years

Elizabeth Mytton was born into a wealthy family and, aged 19, she married Thomas Wilbraham,Jay Merric
''Elizabeth Wilbraham, the first lady of architecture''
''The Independent'', 16 February 2011. Retrieved 2011-12-06.
heir to the Baronetcy of Wilbraham. They went on honeymoon together, travelling throughout Europe. She made this an opportunity to take an extended architectural study tour. In the Netherlands, Elizabeth Wilbraham met architect
Pieter Post Pieter Post in 1651. Portrait by Pieter Nolpe, detail of a larger work Pieter Jansz Post (1 May 1608 – buried 8 May 1669) was a Dutch Golden Age architect, painter and printmaker. Biography Post was baptised in Haarlem, the son of a ...
, creator of the
Dutch baroque Dutch Baroque architecture is a variety of Baroque architecture that flourished in the Dutch Republic and its colonies during the Dutch Golden Age of the 17th century. (Dutch painting during the period is covered by Dutch Golden Age painting). L ...
style of architecture. She studied the works of Palladio in
Veneto it, Veneto (man) it, Veneta (woman) , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = , demographics1_footnotes = , demographics1_title1 = , demographics1_info1 = ...
, Italy and the Stadtresidenz at Landshut, Germany.John Milla
''The first woman architect''
The Architects' Journal, 11 November 2010. Retrieved 2011-12-06.


Personal life

Little is known about Lady Wilbraham's private life, but private letters were discovered and passed to the
Staffordshire Record Office Staffordshire Record Office is the county record office for Staffordshire, England. It is run by Staffordshire County Council, and is located in Eastgate Street, Stafford, behind the William Salt Library. Some records are held at the service's off ...
in 2008. These showed Lady Wilbraham's search for suitable husbands for her daughters, Grace and Margaret. According to the marketing executive of the Weston Park Foundation, "The letters explain the importance of a suitable match within the aristocracy of the day. She was certainly a very strong lady and knew what she wanted and how to get it".


Claims that she was first known woman architect

Historian John Millar claims that Elizabeth Wilbraham is the first known woman architect. Millar says this follows more than 50 years of research into the subject. In 2007 the owners of the stately home,
Wotton House Wotton House, Wotton Underwood, Buckinghamshire, England, is a stately home built between 1704 and 1714, to a design very similar to that of the contemporary version of Buckingham House. The house is an example of English Baroque and a Grade I ...
, organised a conference to investigate who was the original architect of the building. The conference generated at least two follow-up papers: in 2010 Sir Howard Colvin proposed that John Fitch may have been the original architect, and later the same year, Millar, noting Colvin's paper, proposed Lady Wilbraham as an alternative. During the seventeenth century it was impossible for a woman to pursue a profession and Millar stated that Lady Wilbraham used male executant architects to supervise construction in her place. Millar believes she designed more than a dozen houses for her family and, because of the inclusion of distinctive and unusual design details, has been put forward by Millar as the designer of 18 London churches (officially attributed to Christopher Wren). Because Wren came late to architecture, Millar has suggested Elizabeth Wilbraham as his most likely tutor. Millar has gone as far as suggesting as many as 400 buildings as possible works of Elizabeth Wilbraham. They all generally show similarities with Italian or Dutch architecture. Wilbraham owned a 1663 edition of Palladio's book '' I Quattro Libri'' (volume I) and she heavily annotated it. In the authoritative and encyclopaedic ''Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600-1840'' (4th Edn; 2008) by Sir Howard Colvin, however, she is mentioned only once. That notation is as a patroness of architecture. In her dissertation from 2002, Canadian historian, Cynthia Hammond mentions the "awkward designations" given to Lady Wilbraham by
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 ...
. She notes his lack in saying "by Wilbraham" to denote an eroding of Wilbraham's authorship when discussing Weston Park. However, Millar himself admits that not a single letter or signed drawing survives with Willbraham's name on it connecting her with any project. His argument is based around the annotations in her copy of Andrea Palladio and similarities he claims to have found in buildings built at the time. His claim that she designed 400 buildings is equally based on visual similarity. Architectural historian and Wren specialist at Cambridge, James Campbell, suggest the claims are "based mostly on imagination and speculation." And the curator of
Weston Park Weston Park is a country house in Weston-under-Lizard, Staffordshire, England, set in more than of park landscaped by Capability Brown. The park is located north-west of Wolverhampton, and north-east of Telford, close to the border with Shrop ...
, Gareth Williams, said that no proof existed of a career as an architect.


Notable projects

*
Weston Park Weston Park is a country house in Weston-under-Lizard, Staffordshire, England, set in more than of park landscaped by Capability Brown. The park is located north-west of Wolverhampton, and north-east of Telford, close to the border with Shrop ...
, Staffordshire (1671) - sources such as
Historic England Historic England (officially the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England) is an executive non-departmental public body of the British Government sponsored by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. It is tasked w ...
attribute the design to Elizabeth Wilbraham, but others, such as the Weston Park Foundation, press the claims of William Taylor. *
St Andrew's Church, Weston-under-Lizard The Church of St Andrew, Weston-under-Lizard, Staffordshire is a Grade I listed Anglican church. Its origins are medieval, but it was largely rebuilt in the very early 18th century by Elizabeth Wilbraham of Weston Park, and restored in the 19th c ...
- the estate church for Weston Park.
Pevsner Pevsner or Pevzner is a Jewish surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Aihud Pevsner (1925–2018), American physicist * Antoine Pevsner (1886–1962), Russian sculptor, brother of Naum Gabo * David Pevsner, American actor, singer, da ...
describes the church as "an enterprise of Lady Wilbraham... f1700-1". *
Wotton House Wotton House, Wotton Underwood, Buckinghamshire, England, is a stately home built between 1704 and 1714, to a design very similar to that of the contemporary version of Buckingham House. The house is an example of English Baroque and a Grade I ...
, Buckinghamshire (rebuilt 1704–1714) - architect unknown, but Elizabeth Wilbraham or John Fitch have been put forward.


Footnotes


See also

* Women in architecture


References


Sources

*


Further reading

* Anne Laurence, "Women Using Building in Seventeenth-Century England: A Question of Sources?" ''Transactions of the Royal Historical Society'' (2003) * Eva Alvarez and Carlos Gomez.
The Invisible Women: How Female Architects were Erased from History
” ''Architectural Review'', 2017 * Eve M. Kahn,

” ''The New York Times'', 2012 {{DEFAULTSORT:Wilbraham, Elizabeth 17th-century English architects British women architects 1632 births 1705 deaths Architects from Staffordshire Wives of baronets