At Home: A Short History of Private Life

by Bill Bryson

Whatever one thought of Vanbrugh and his creations, the age of the celebrity architect had begun.* Before Vanbrugh’s day, architects weren’t much celebrated. Generally, fame went to those who paid for the houses, not those who designed them. Hardwick Hall, which we encountered in Chapter III, was one of the great buildings of its age, yet it is merely supposed that Robert Smythson was the architect. It is a pretty good supposition, for all kinds of reasons, but there is no actual proof of it. Smythson was in fact the first man to be called an architect—or nearly to be called an architect—on a monument of about 1588, in which he is described as “architector and survayor.” But as with so many others of his era, very little is known about his early life, including where he was born and when. He makes his first appearance in the records at Longleat House at Wiltshire in 1568, when he was already in his thirties and a master mason. Where he was before that is completely unknown. Even after architecture became a recognized profession, most practitioners came from other backgrounds. Inigo Jones was a designer of theatrical productions, Christopher Wren an astronomer, Robert Hooke a scientist, Vanbrugh a soldier and playwright, William Kent a painter and interior designer. As a formal profession, architecture was actually very late developing. Compulsory examinations were not introduced until 1882 in Britain, and architecture wasn’t offered anywhere as a full-time academic discipl...