Thomas Archer

English Baroque architect

Thomas Archer (1668–1743) was an English Baroque architect. His buildings are important as the only ones by an English Baroque architect to show evidence of study of contemporary continental, namely Italian, architecture. It is said that his work is somewhat overshadowed by that of his contemporaries Sir John Vanbrugh and Nicholas Hawksmoor.

Archer spent his youth at Umberslade Hall in Tanworth in Arden in Warwickshire, the youngest son of Thomas Archer, a country gentleman, Parliamentary Colonel and Member of Parliament, and Ann Leigh, daughter of the London haberdasher, Richard Leigh. The exact date of Archer's birth is unknown, but can be inferred from the two documentary sources that mention his age. One is an entry in the Oxford University register recording his matriculation at Trinity College on 12 June 1686, aged 17; the other, his epitaph, survives in the parish church of Hale, Hampshire. If these records are accurate, he must have been born between 12 June 1668 and 22 May 1669. Thomas is the only one of the Archer children not to have his birth recorded in the Tamworth in Arden parish register, which suggests he may have been born elsewhere. He attended Trinity College, Oxford, from which he matriculated on 12 June 1686. After leaving university, he went on a Grand Tour, spending four years abroad and was influenced by the work of Bernini and Borromini.

Among Archer's churches was St John Evangelist, Westminster, suggestive of Hawksmoor's baroque influence. Its four towers were originally built to stabilise subsidence. Historians believed that was more likely than following Sir John Vanbrgh's style. Built in 1750, St Paul's, Deptford, sweeping semi circular porticos were not copied for a century until Smirke's magnificent church at St Mary's, Bryanston Square that dominated the street. At St Philip's, Birmingham, now Birmingham Cathedral there was a strong sense of the Italianate Lombardic influences of High Baroque style of churches: ornate, high ceilings, with cupola and dome. External to St Philips is the roof balustrade quite unusual in English church architecture. St John's and St Paul's were both built for the Commission for Building Fifty New Churches. John Summerson said these two buildings "represent the most advanced Baroque style ever attempted in England". According to the minutes of the Commissioners, Archer also "improved" Hawksmoor's designs for St Alfege's at Greenwich, although the nature of the improvements, or whether they were implemented, is unknown. At Hale, Hampshire, he remodelled St Mary's Church, which also contains his memorial, carved by Sir Henry Cheere to Archer's own design.

Archer's secular works included Roehampton House, Welford Park in Berkshire, and the Cascade House and the west front and broadly bowed pilastered north front at Chatsworth House. In 1709–11 Archer designed a Baroque garden pavilion for Henry Grey, 1st Duke of Kent at Wrest Park, Silsoe, Bedfordshire. After 1712 Archer designed Hurstbourne Priors in Hampshire for John Wallop (later Earl of Portsmouth). He was a founding governor of the Foundling Hospital in London in 1739, but was not involved in the construction of the resulting building, completed c. 1750. The architect for that project was Theodore Jacobsen.