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Champneys, Basil
(b London, 17 Sept 1842; d London, 5 April 1935). English architect and writer. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and articled to John Prichard of Llandaff, Glamorgan, setting up in independent practice in 1867. He began moving in the circle of William Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti and between 1868 and 1870 designed St Luke’s, Kentish Town, London, in a Gothic Revival style, with stained glass by Henry Holiday and Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. In 1872 Champneys designed the Eel Brook Common Board School (destr.), Harwood Road, Fulham, London. It was the first of the London board-schools, which were built as a result of the Elementary Education Act (1870), to be designed in the QUEEN ANNE REVIVAL style by a number of architects, one of the most important being J. J. STEVENSON. It had Flemish gables, large chimney-stacks and dormer windows. As a writer Champneys also supported this emerging style and praised vernacular traditions. Oak Tree House (1872–3; destr.), Hampstead, London, a house and studio for Holiday, was an ingenious Queen Anne Revival design, built to exploit the view and with unusual details such as a bell hung between two chimney-stacks. Among other domestic commissions, his own house, Manor Farm (1879–80; now Hall Oak), 42 Frognal Lane, London, survives. Between 1874 and 1910 Champneys designed a series of buildings for Newnham College, Cambridge, only the second college for women at the University. These buildings, again in the Queen Anne Revival style and informally laid out, are outstandingly pretty, with Flemish gables, broken pediments and many bay and oriel windows; the white window-frames and bars contrast with the red brick. Other commissions, which were predominantly educational, include an extension (1881–3) to Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford; the Butler Museum (1884–6), Harrow School, north London; the John Rylands Library (1890–99), Manchester, in a Gothic Revival style; and the first buildings for Bedford College (1910–13), London.
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