Charles Fowler

Charles Fowler (17 May 1792 – 26 September 1867) was an English architect, born and baptised at Cullompton, Devon. He is especially noted for his design of market buildings, including Covent Garden Market in London.

Fowler was born at Cullompton, Devon on 17 May 1792, and baptised on 26 December 1800, also at Cullompton. He was educated at Taunton Grammar School After serving an apprenticeship of seven years with John Powning of Exeter, he moved to London in 1814, and entered the office of David Laing, where he assisted him on the designs for the Custom House. He then set up his own practice, working from an address in Great Ormond Street, and later, from 1830, at 1, Gordon Square.

Fowler generally worked in a classical style, often freely interpreted. Thomas Leverton Donaldson described him as "gifted with a practical rather than an imaginative turn of mind.". An important early work was the court of bankruptcy in Basinghall Street, finished in 1821. This was a substantial brick building, raised over a granite basement and stuccoed in imitation of rusticated stonework. It had a courtyard, two sides of which had open arcades, supported on square granite columns.

In 1822 Fowler entered the competition to design the new London Bridge, and won first prize, with a proposal for five-arched bridge. However, the scheme was rejected by a committee of the House of Commons, and the commission awarded to John Rennie. Four years later he rebuilt the bridge across the River Dart at Totnes in his native Devon.

In 1818 Fowler began work on the new market at Gravesend in Kent, with a pair of colonnades, 80 feet long, connected by a covered building at one end.

In around 1826, the Duke of Bedford commissioned him to construct buildings to house the market in the Piazza at Covent Garden, which until then had been accommodated in sheds and hovels. There, as in many other of his buildings, he used Haytor granite mined in Dartmoor, partly for its strength and partly out of a desire to encourage an industry in his native Devon. Just across the Strand, on a site sloping down towards the Thames, he later built Hungerford Market. His involvement with the project predated his designs for Covent Garden, as he had been asked to survey the site as early as 1824, but the act allowing the work and incorporating the company was not enacted until May 1830. Fowler's building was finally opened in 1833. Donaldson praised the way in which Fowler exploited the complex, multi-level site, describing the "playful picturesqueness of the group, where court rose above court, galleries above galleries, and where the series of roofs outtopped each other." In this building, Fowler demonstrated his preference for lightweight construction. He later added an iron roof over the main courtyard. Later in the 19th century the building was demolished to make way for Charing Cross Station.

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