William Benson (architect)

William Benson (1682 – 2 February 1754) was a talented amateur architect and an ambitious and self-serving Whig place-holder in the government of George I. In 1718, Benson arranged to displace the aged Sir Christopher Wren as Surveyor of the King's Works, a project in which he had the assistance of John Aislabie, according to Nicholas Hawksmoor, who was deprived of his double post to provide places for Benson's brother.

Benson was the eldest son of Sir William Benson, Sheriff of London in 1706–07. He made a Grand Tour as a young man, which was extended to a prolonged visit to Hanover, the seat of the Elector, who was next in line to the British throne, where Benson paid assiduous court, and to , far from the usual beaten track. In London he published a Whig tract, that offered a warning against Jacobitism and a polemic against Divine Right of kingship in a Letter to Sir J[acob] B[ankes] addressed transparently to Sir Jacob Bancks; it reached its eleventh edition in 1711 and was translated into French.

Benson's interests extended to hydraulics (Colvin 1993). He carried out a project to bring piped water to Shaftesbury; according to a memoir of the hydraulics engineer John Theophilus Desaguliers, it was actually the invention of Mr Holland, the modest curate of Shaftesbury, but Benson took the credit, which resulted in his election as Whig Member of Parliament in 1716. With the "Water Engine" plans in hand, he gave directions for waterworks to be built for the Elector George at Herrenhausen, Hanover, borrowing Mr Holland's smith and foreman; they resulted in the largest fountain in the gardens. The main jet, expected to rise a hundred feet, merely spurted a disappointing ten. Benson ingratiated himself with the Elector and his mother the Electress Sophia at the time of his visit in 1704–06, pressing unwanted gifts upon the Electress.

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