(b Clapham, London, 22 May 1849; d London, 21 Aug 1930). English architect. After attending school in Brighton, he was articled for five years from 1866 with Banks & Barry, London, while also attending classes at the Architectural Association. He established his own practice in 1873 and was soon joined by Edward Ingress Bell (1836–1914), whose precise role in the partnership has always been a slight mystery. Their first large venture came with their successful competition design of 1885 for the Victoria Law Courts in Birmingham: a structure clad in terracotta, with rich detailing, completed in 1891. There followed a number of smaller works in London: 23 Austin Friars; 13–15 Moorgate (1890–93), in a Franco-Flemish style; the French Protestant Church, Soho Square (1891–3); and the Royal United Services Institution, Whitehall (1893–5), with its cherubic figures by William Silver Frith (1850–1924). In 1890 Webb began a major restoration of the church of St Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield, and built one of his few residential works, referred to by Nikolaus Pevsner as the ‘astonishing Jacobean fantasy’, Yeaton-Peverey House (1890–92), near Shrewsbury, Salop. Webb also contributed three major buildings in South Kensington, London. The first, won in an invited competition (1891), was for a major addition to the Victoria and Albert Museum with a façade to Cromwell Road. With this design, Webb stretched his talent for mixing Renaissance styles to its limit, creating a skyline broken by pavilion domes, campaniles and, at the centre of the principal façade, a column-tiered tower supporting an open crown. Webb’s other two buildings in South Kensington, the Chemistry and Physics Building (1898–1906; destr.) for the Royal College of Science and Technology and the Royal School of Mines (1908–13), Prince Consort Road, were very much in the restrained French classicism of the late 18th century admired in the Edwardian period.

• Webb, Aston
  • Walcot, William
  • collaboration
    • Birmingham, §1: History and urban development
    • Brock, Thomas
    • England, §IV, 4: Sculpture, c 1830–c 1914
    • Law court, §2: From c 1860
    • New Sculpture
    • Ricardo, Halsey
  • groups and movements
    • Baroque Revival
  • pupils
    • Creswell, H. B.
  • staff
    • Dods, Robin
  • works
    • Blore, Edward
    • Cambridge (i), §1(ii): History and urban development, 1800 and after
    • Dublin, §I, 3: History and urban development, after 1800
    • England, §XIV, 4: Museums, after 1890
    • Ireland, §II, 4: Architecture, after c 1860
    • Nash, John, §1(ii)(a): Work for the Crown, c 1810 and after: Buildings for royalty
    • Palace, §II, 5: 19th and 20th centuries