John Hayward (architect)

John Hayward was born in London on 26 September 1807, the son of a 'house and ornament painter', John Pearson Hayward and Frances Barry and related to Sir Charles Barry, the designer of the Palace of Westminster, with whom he served as pupil.

[1] He was an accomplished painter and draughtsman; by 1826, he was exhibiting at the Royal Academy and, by 1834, he had left Barry and set up practice in Cathedral Yard, Exeter, Devon.

"[5] This accolade soon led to further work; in Scotland, Lady Cecil Chetwynd-Talbot, the Marchioness of Lothian, commissioned Hayward to design St John's Church, Jedburgh in 1844,[6] and in Oxfordshire he designed St. James' Church in Little Milton, Oxfordshire, to which he added the west tower in 1861.

[7] which opened in 1868 as a practical memorial to Prince Albert, and is the largest museum in the city.

Whilst many of his designs were for religious use, he also designed schools and worked on other buildings, including The Hall, Pembroke College, Oxford, (1844)[8] which Nikolaus Pevsner described as "the most ambitious of all halls except Wolsey's" at Christ Church College,[9] and Exeter Prison[10] on New North Road, Exeter, which was based upon the plans of the new model prison at Pentonville.

The Royal Albert Memorial Museum , Exeter, designed by John Hayward