Somerset House

The mainstream of English architecture continued with the work of William Chambers (1723-96) who was the well-travelled son of an English merchant. He visited India and China in his youth, studied in Paris and Italy from 1749 to 1755, and became tutor to the Prince of Wales, later the Prince Regent, from 1757 to 1763. While so employed, he published his "Treatise on Civil Architecture," which is probabl ythe last important writing of the English Renaissance. Somerset House was built by an Act of Parliment as a central rendezvous for the many learned and important societies which were beginning to play a real part in national afffairs. It was also to house the navy office, the ordnance, stamp, salt and tax offices and to be a major administrative center. Nothing on the scale ahd been attempted since the beginning of Greenwich Hospital and Chambers seems to have leaned heavily on the examples of Anglo-Palladian work which he descibed in his treatise.