Edward Blore
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Entrance to the Alupka Palace |
Edward Blore (
1787 -
1879) was a
19th century British
architect and
antiquary. He was born in
Edinburgh,
Scotland. (Some sources claim he was originally from
Derby, England.)
Blore is most notable for his completion of
John Nash's design of
Buckingham Palace, following Nash's dismissal. He completed the palace in a style similar but plainer than that intended by Nash. In
1847 Blore returned to the palace and designed the great
facade facing
The Mall thus enclosing the central
quadrangle. He also worked at St James' Palaces in London, and a large number of other designs in both England and Scotland.
Blore was personal friend of Sir
Walter Scott, and like him was interested in the
baronial architecture of Scottish castles. This led to
Prince Vorontsov's suggestion to design his extensive palace in
Alupka, in the
Crimea. The Alupka palace was built between
1828 and
1846, in a mixture of styles ranging from
Gothic Revival to
Moorish Revival. The palace's guidebook describes the building as "Blore's tribute to
Muslim architecture". Actually, the structure features two facades, contrasting "the starkness of Scottish Baronial on its landward side with Arabian fantasy facing the sea" [
1].
As a recognised
establishment architect Blore was involved in many other projects related to the
British Empire, this included Government House in
Sydney,
Australia, which he designed circa
1870 in the form of Gothic castle. Such designs were certainly unusual, and display a more adventurous side to Blore's work than can be seen from his work in London. His East front, the public face, of Buckingham Palace was criticised from the moment of its completion, as banal street architecture, a view shared by King
George V who had the facade redesigned in
1913.
Blore died in 1879, and is buried
Highgate Cemetery (West), Highgate,
London,
England. He was tutor to the architects
Philip Charles Hardwick and
Frederick Marrable.
*
Alupka Palace*
Buckingham Palace*
Cambridge University Press Pitt Building
*
St. James's Palace (alterations)
*
Westminster Abbey Choir and Screen
*
Bedford Modern School (1834-1974, now the Harpur Centre facade)
* Sir
Banister Fletcher:
Banister Fletcher's A History of Architecture - Editor: Dan Cruickshank (Architectural Press, Oxford, 1996) ISBN 0750622679
* Charlotte Gere and Michael Whiteway:
Nineteenth-Century Design: From Pugin to Mackintosh (Weidenfeld and Nicholson, London, 1993) ISBN 0297830686
*
The Alupka Palace*
Website in memory of Philip Charles Hardwick
