John Gwynn (architect)

John Gwynn RA (1713 – 28 February 1786) was an English architect and civil engineer, who became one of the founder members of the Royal Academy in 1768. He advocated greater control over planning in London, for which he produced detailed suggestions. His buildings include Magdalen Bridge and the Covered Market in Oxford, and several bridges over the River Severn.

Gwynn was born and died in Shrewsbury, Shropshire. He worked initially as a carpenter, but then decided to practice as a (largely self-taught) architect and town planner, moving to London, where he became a friend of Samuel Johnson.

In 1749, when Sir Christopher Wren's drawings were sold, Gwynn obtained Wren's plan for the rebuilding of the City of London, and published it, adding some comments of his own. Seventeen years later, in 1766, he published London and Westminster Improved, in which he criticised the loose control over building in the West End, saying that "the finest part of town is left to ignorant and capricious persons", and called for development to be controlled by a general plan. He made more than a hundred suggestions for improvements to the capital. They included the rebuilding of London Bridge; the construction of a "St, George's Bridge" in the position where Waterloo Bridge was eventually built; a "King's Square" on the site of the Royal Mews (later occupied by Trafalgar Square); a royal palace in Hyde Park; a street following a route close to that of Nash's later Regent Street and quays along both sides of the Thames. The Quarterly Review noted in 1826 that

No part of his ingenious design, however, was adopted: the publication does not appear to have produced any public interest at the time; and Mr. Gwynn has been so little thought of since that his designs lately brought forward as original conceptions.

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