William Benson

William Benson (1682 – 2 February 1754) was a talented amateur architect and Whig politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1715 to 1719. In 1718, he arranged to displace the aged Sir Christopher Wren as Surveyor of the King's Works, but his short time in that post was not a success. Life Benson was the eldest son of Sir William Benson, Sheriff of London in 1706–07, and his wife Martha Austin, daughter of John Austin, jeweller of London. He made a Grand Tour as a young man, which was extended to a prolonged visit in 1704–1706 to Hanover, the seat of the Elector, who was next in line to the British throne. He paid assiduous court and ingratiated himself with the Elector and his mother the Electress Sophia, pressing unwanted gifts upon the Electress. He also went to Stockholm, 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. Returning to London with fresh impressions of innovative neo-Palladian constructions currently afoot at Herrenhausen, in 1707 he married Eleanor Earle, the daughter of Joseph Earle, a wealthy merchant of Bristol; and received from his father purchases of land in Wiltshire to the value of £5,000. The following February he rented the classical Caroline Amesbury Abbey, Wiltshire, then attributed to Inigo Jones, on a twenty-one-year lease, and in 1709 he set to work designing Wilbury House for himself on a nearby property at Newton Tony , which he purchased that year from Hon. John Fiennes. Wilbury, the earliest example of neo-Palladianism in England, was a modest villa of one storey, nine bays in length, with a pedimented portico over the three central bays. Above the simply framed windows isolated bas-relief tablets were inserted in the wall. Small windows in a low rusticated basement lit service areas. Chimney stacks stood at the ends of the angled roofs. A central balustraded belvedere with a dome raised on columns crowned the elevation. In this manner Wilbury was illustrated in Colen Campbell's first volume of Vitruvius Britannicus (1715, plates 51–52), credited to Benson as inventor and builder. Later, as Surveyor, Benson appointed the professional Campbell Deputy Surveyor and Chief Clerk.