Raphael Brandon

John Raphael Rodrigues Brandon (5 April 1817 in London – 8 October 1877 at his chambers at 17 Clement's Inn, Strand, London) was a British architect and architectural writer.

He was the second child of the six children of Joshua de Isaac Moses Rodrigues Brandon and his wife, Sarah. He learned architecture under J. Dédeau in Alençon, France and then under Joseph T. Parkinson (to whom he was apprenticed in 1836).

Both he and his brother Joshua Arthur Rodrigues Brandon were keen adherents of the Neo Gothic style and, as well as going into private practice together between 1841 and 1847 at Beaufort Buildings, Strand, they jointly produced a series of three works on Early English ecclesiastical architecture that became and remained architectural pattern books for the whole 19th century -

serves the one useful and necessary purpose of showing practically and constructively what the builders of the middle ages really did with the materials they had at hand, and how all those materials, whatever they were, were made to harmonise.

In the 1840s John and Joshua designed several stations and engine-houses in the style of medieval manor houses on the London and Croydon Railway, disguising chimneys as early Gothic church bell-towers. Joshua's own exhibited designs at the Royal Academy between 1838 and 1874 included a design for Colchester town hall (1843, in his and Blore's name - built in 1845) and in 1853, together with Robert Ritchie, a design for the interior of the Church of Christ the King, Bloomsbury of the Catholic Apostolic Church.

Among the many churches Joshua built independently were the small church of St Peter's in Great Windmill Street, London (1848) and Holy Trinity Church, Knightsbridge (1861), both of which have since been demolished. He also built, altered, and restored many other churches. However, even Brandon's becoming a fellow of the Institute of British Architects in 1860 failed to bring him the same success as an active architect as he had had as an author and this, the early death of his brother Joshua, and the death of his wife and child, all drove him to suicide by shooting himself in the head.

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