George Wightwick
British architect (1802-1872)
George Wightwick (26 August 1802 – 9 July 1872) was a British architect based in Plymouth, and possibly the first architectural journalist.
In addition to his architectural practice, he developed his skills and the market for architectural journalism. His views of church design disagreed with those of churchmen with power to commission new churches and this work dropped off after he published his ideas in Weale's Quarterly papers on Architecture in 1844/5. He married twice but had no children and died at Portishead on 9 July 1872.
Life and work
Early years
Wightwick was born in Alyn Bank, near Mold, Flintshire, Wales and trained in London under Edward Lapidge. Following a year of travel and study in Italy, he published Select Views of Roman Antiquities (1828) .
Plymouth
In the late 1820s, Wightwick moved to Plymouth, and worked with John Foulston, succeeding to Foulston's practice after six months. From then until 1852, when he retired to Bristol, he completed many public and domestic buildings, mostly in Plymouth, Devon and Cornwall, including Christ Church, Eton Place, North Road, Plymouth (1846)
Wightwick, who was a member of The Plymouth Institution (now The Plymouth Athenaeum), was well known in Plymouth as an architect and as an amateur actor and comedian.
He completed designs by Foulston for Bodmin County Lunatic Asylum and designed the Plymouth Mechanics' Institute, Athenaeum Terrace, the Esplanade, the Devon and Cornwall Female Orphan Asylum and the Post Office at Devonport.
In Devon, he designed Calverleigh Court, and Watermouth Castle, near Ilfracombe.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5546252. VIAF identifies the subject as 5280383. The Library of Congress control number is nr92044571. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1802, 1872, 1844 and 1828.
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This entry incorporates text from “George Wightwick” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.