James Brooks (architect)

James Brooks (1825–1901) was an English Gothic Revival architect.

Brooks was born near Wantage, Berkshire, in 1825. In about 1847 he was articled to the London architect Lewis Stride. He attended Thomas Leverton Donaldson's lectures at University College, London, and enrolled as a student at the Royal, Academy Schools. He set up in practice in about 1852,

He was architect to the Diocesan Society of Canterbury, and a consulting architect to the Incorporated Society for Building Churches. He became a fellow of the Royal Society of British Architects in 1866, and was its vice-president from 1892–96. He received its Royal Gold Medal in 1895.

He exhibited at the Royal Academy between 1853 and 1899; from 1894 as "James Brooks and Sons". His address is given in the Academy catalogues as 6 Bloomsbury Street between 1853 and 1862; 11, Serle Street, Lincoln's Inn, between 1871 and 1875, and 35 Wellington Street, Strand from 1876. He lived, however, for much of this time at The Grange in Stoke Newington (now numbered 42, Clissold Crescent), a red-brick house built to his own design in 1862.

Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo was his pupil

Brooks attracted attention early in his career for several large brick-built churches in East London: St. Michael and All Angels, Shoreditch, St Saviour, Hoxton, St. Columba, Haggerston and St. Chad, Haggerston

The last two churches were built as part of the Haggerston Church scheme, which had been set up in 1860, on the initiative of the vicar of St Mary's, the parish church. St Mary's had been designed John Nash in the Gothic style of his time. The first initiative of the scheme was create a chancel and sanctuary of the kind held to be suitable for modern high church ideas of religious ritual. Brooks was brought in to do the work and, according to T. Francis Bumpus, "the boldness with which he grappled with such a monster as Nash's structure won him much praise. It was one of his earliest works, and its cleverness and originality brought him into public notice."

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