George Vaughan Maddox (1802–27 February 1864) was a nineteenth-century British architect and builder, whose work was undertaken principally in the town of Monmouth, Wales, and in the wider county. Working mainly in a Neo-Classical style, his extensive output made a significant contribution to the Monmouth townscape. The architectural historian John Newman considers that Monmouth owes to Maddox "its particular architectural flavour. For two decades from the mid-1820s he put up a sequence of public buildings and private houses in the town, in a style deft, cultured, and only occasionally unresolved."[1] The Market Hall and 1-6 Priory Street are considered his "most important projects".[2]
Life and works
Maddox was born in 1802, the son of a builder, John Maddox, who also worked in the county.[3][a]Howard Colvin suggests he was related to George Maddox.[5] Maddox undertook a range of building commissions, including public works, churches and private domestic and commercial buildings.
Public works
Maddox designed some of Monmouth's most notable buildings including "his major work"[6] the Market Hall.[7] In the early 1830s, he won a competition organised by the borough council in Monmouth. The council had two main objectives: to relieve Church Street, then the major route into the town from the east, of through traffic; and to provide a new market hall, to allow the removal of the existing market from beneath the Shire Hall, enabling the expansion of that building to accommodate the new Assizes court. Maddox proposed a new carriage road running above the bank of the River Monnow, supported by a viaduct. The Market Hall, with a crescent-shaped frontage of Bath Stone in a Doric style, and an Ioniccupola and clerestory above the central part of the building, was built on one side of the road, and a long convex stuccoed frontage, 1-6 Priory Street, on the opposite side.[8] A range of slaughterhouses, the Shambles, comprising 24 rooms with openings onto the river so that their waste would drain directly into it, were sited beneath the sandstone arches of the viaduct. The new road, now Priory Street, was opened in 1834, and the Market Hall in 1840.[9][10] John Newman notes the ingenuity and innovation of Maddox's scheme, which created "a remarkably early inner bypass".[1]
Within the wider county, he undertook a limited early re-building of The Hendre,[32] and carried out work in Commercial Street, Pontypool.[33]Cadw suggests that Maddox was also the architect of the main block of Piercefield House, near Chepstow, working to designs by Sir John Soane.[34] Given the date of Maddox's birth, and the construction period for Piercefield, this seems unlikely. Newman follows the more conventional attribution to Soane himself.[35]
^Keith Kissack, who suggests “Benjamin” as Maddox’s father’s forename, notes the difficulty in establishing a genealogy for the family. Describing them as “infidels” (non-attenders at the established church), he writes that the family “rarely appear in the parish registers. This makes their lineage difficult to disentangle.”[4]
^The attribution of No.18 to George Vaughan Maddox is uncertain. Cadw notes that the house is "said to have been designed by one of the Maddox family, but the doorway appears genuine 18th century."[26] Keith Kissack notes that Charles Heath, the Monmouth antiquarian, attributed the house to Maddox, but suggests that it may be by one of his family, rather than George Vaughan.[27]
^Another instance of uncertainty as to which of the Maddox family may have been responsible for a structural design is the temple in the Nelson Garden on Monnow Street. The Nelson Garden Trust suggests George Maddox (1760-1843) as a possible designer and a construction date in the 1840s.[28]Cadw considers the building to be roughly contemporary with its house, No.18 Monnow, Street, which would place it very late in the 18th or very early in the 19th centuries, and suggests the property's owner, Philip Meakins Hardwick, as the likely designer.[29] Philip Bly, in his Guide to the complete Monmouth Heritage Blue Plaque Trail, suggests there were in fact two temples, and posits George Vaughan Maddox as the designer of the 1840's replacement.[30] Newman does not suggest an architect but does comment on the structure's "most eccentric" design.[31]
.jpg)
.jpg)
