William Mason (architect), Date of Birth, Date of Death

    

William Mason (architect)

architect

Date of Birth: 24-Feb-1810

Date of Death: 22-Jun-1897

Profession: architect, politician

Nationality: New Zealand

Zodiac Sign: Pisces


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About William Mason (architect)

  • William Mason (24 February 1810 – 22 June 1897) was a New Zealand architect born in Ipswich, England, the son of an architect/builder George Mason and Susan, nÊe Forty.
  • Trained by his father he went to London where he seems to have worked for Thomas Telford (1757–1834).
  • He studied under Peter Nicholson (1765–1844) before eventually working for Edward Blore (1787–1879).
  • In 1831 he married Sarah Nichols, a Berkshire woman apparently fifteen years older than he was.
  • A son was born in the first year of their marriage.
  • In 1836 he returned to Ipswich to practise.
  • Having worked at Lambeth Palace he had attracted the interest of the Bishop of London who now employed him independently designing churches and parsonages.
  • These included three commissions for churches in Essex: St Lawrence, East Donyland; St Botolph, Colchester; and St James, Brightlingsea.
  • The most remarkable of these is St Botolph's (1838) in white brick and Norman style.
  • Apparently Georgian in plan and in its interior it strikes a Medieval note outside.
  • St James (1836), also white brick and in the lancet style and resembling some of Blore's work, is very like St Paul's Church Auckland which Mason built a few years later.
  • Perhaps because of economic hardship, perhaps because of ambition in 1838 the Masons emigrated to New South Wales.In Sydney Mason worked for the Colonial Architect Mortimer Lewis.
  • He had a success in winning first and second prizes for a new Mechanics' Institute, submitting Gothic and Classical designs, a sign of the rising competition between these styles.
  • He built wheat silos on Cockatoo Island, a task requiring engineering ingenuity.
  • It seems that here he acquired his acquaintance with verandas.
  • A new Government House was then under construction which had been designed by Edward Blore while Mason had still been on his staff in 1835.
  • He may have worked on the drawings.

Read more at Wikipedia

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