William Eden Nesfield was an English architect, designer and painter.

W. E. Nesfield was the eldest son of the landscape architect and painter William Andrews Nesfield. He was educated at Eton

Eton College

Eton College, often referred to simply as Eton, is a British independent school for boys aged 13 to 18. It was founded in 1440 by King Henry VI as "The King's College of Our Lady of Eton besides Wyndsor"....

 and then articled to the architect William Burn

William Burn

William Burn was a Scottish architect, pioneer of the Scottish Baronial style.He was born in Edinburgh, the son of architect Robert Burn, and educated at the Royal High School. After training with the architect of the British Museum, Sir Robert Smirke, he returned to Edinburgh in 1812...

 in 1850, transferring after two years to his uncle by marriage, Anthony Salvin

Anthony Salvin

Anthony Salvin was an English architect. He gained a reputation as an expert on medieval buildings and applied this expertise to his new buildings and his restorations...

. He travelled widely in the 1850s and published his fine drawings in Specimens of Mediaeval Architecture (1862). He started his own architectural practice around 1860 but soon linked up with his friend Richard Norman Shaw

Richard Norman Shaw

Richard Norman Shaw RA , was an influential Scottish architect from the 1870s to the 1900s, known for his country houses and for commercial buildings.-Life:...

, with whom he was in a formal partnership between 1866 and 1869, though they kept their jobs separate.

Nesfield and Shaw contributed greatly to the new domestic styles of English architecture which began in the 1860s and flourished in the 1870s, notably the Old English and Queen Anne styles. Many of Nesfield’s clients were aristocratic friends of his father’s, and his designs tended to be more extravagant and ornamental than Shaw’s. Notable examples were additions to Combe Abbey, Warwickshire (1862-5, mostly demolished); Cloverley Hall, Shropshire (1866–8, demolished); Kinmel Hall

Kinmel Hall

Kinmel Hall is a mansion near the village of St. George, close to the coastal town of Abergele, in Conwy county borough, Wales.The present chateau style house, the third on the site, was designed by W. E. Nesfield in the 1870s, and the adjoining Venetian Gardens were designed by his father, W. A....

, Flintshire (1871–4) and Bodrhyddan (1872–4). He also designed many charming small lodges and cottages, most famously a lodge in Regent’s Park (demolished), and another at Kew Gardens (1866–7), both in London.

Nesfield gave up architectural practice around the time his father died in 1881, and retired to Brighton

Brighton

Brighton is the major part of the city of Brighton and Hove in East Sussex, England on the south coast of Great Britain...

, where he died at the age of 53. He is usually considered one of the most original of the Victorian domestic architects, but he was not interested in publicity. He preferred to pursue his career privately and enjoy himself with his bohemian friends, many of them artists.

External links

• http://www.whistler.arts.gla.ac.uk/biog/Nesf_WE.htm