Sir Charles Barry FRS RA (23 May 1795 – 12 May 1860) was a British architect, best known for his role in the rebuilding of the Palace of Westminster (also known as the Houses of Parliament) in London during the mid-19th century, but also responsible for numerous other buildings and gardens.

He is known for his major contribution to the use of Italianate architecture in Britain,[1] especially the use of the Palazzo as basis for the design of country houses, city mansions and public buildings.

[3] He was educated at private schools in Homerton and then Aspley Guise,[4] before being apprenticed to Middleton & Bailey,[5] Lambeth architects and surveyors, at the age of 15.

[6] Upon the death of his father, Barry inherited a sum of money that allowed him, after coming of age, to undertake an extensive Grand Tour around the Mediterranean and Middle East, from 28 June 1817 to August 1820.

In Rome, he sketched antiquities, sculptures and paintings at the Vatican Museums and other galleries,[8] before carrying on to Naples, Pompeii, Bari and then Corfu.

While in Italy, Barry met Charles Lock Eastlake, an architect, William Kinnaird and Francis Johnson (later a professor at Haileybury and Imperial Service College) and Thomas Leverton Donaldson.

[9][10] With these gentlemen he visited Greece, where their itinerary covered Athens, which they left on 25 June 1818, Mount Parnassus, Delphi, Aegina, then the Cyclades, including Delos, then Smyrna[11] and Turkey, where Barry greatly admired the magnificence of Hagia Sophia.

[13] Middle East sites they visited included Dendera, the Temple of Edfu and Philae[14] – it was at the last of these three that he met his future client, William John Bankes, on 13 January 1819[15] – then Thebes, Luxor and Karnak.

[16] Continuing through the Middle East, the major sites and cities visited were Jaffa, the Dead Sea, Jerusalem, including the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, then Bethlehem,[16] Baalbek, Jerash, Beirut, Damascus and Palmyra,[17] then on to Homs.

[25] Now 29 Clapham Common Northside, the Georgian house of five bays and three stories[26] was designed by Samuel Pepys Cockerell as his own home.

These were in the Gothic Revival architecture style, including two in Lancashire, St Matthew, Campfield, Manchester (1821–22), and All Saints' Church, Whitefield (or Stand) (1822–25).

Two further Gothic churches in Lancashire, not for the Commissioners followed in 1824: St Saviour's Church, Ringley, partially rebuilt in 1851–54, and Barry's neglected Welsh Baptist Chapel, on Upper Brook Street (1837–39)[33] in Manchester (and owned by the City Council), long open to the elements and at serious risk after its roof was removed in late 2005, the building was converted to private apartments in 2014–17.

In 1837, he won the competition to design the Reform Club,[49] Pall Mall, London, which is one of his finest Italianate public buildings, notable for its double height central saloon with glazed roof.

Largely demolished in 1912, only a small portion of the house, consisting of the porte-cochère with a curving corridor, and the stables, are still standing, although the gardens are undergoing a restoration.

[51] Between 1834 and 1838, at Bowood House,[52] Wiltshire, owned by Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, 3rd Marquess of Lansdowne, Barry added the tower, made alterations to the gardens, and designed the Italianate entrance lodge.

At Harewood House[57] he remodelled the John Carr exterior between 1843 and 1850, adding an extra floor to the end pavilions, and replacing the portico on the south front with Corinthian pilasters.

Some of the Robert Adam interiors were remodelled, with the dining room being entirely by Barry, and he created the formal terraces and parterres surrounding the house.

[61] Between 1850 and 1852, Barry remodelled Gawthorpe Hall,[62] an Elizabethan house situated south-east of the small town of Padiham, in the borough of Burnley, Lancashire.

The most significant of Barry's designs that were not carried out included, his proposed Law Courts (1840–41), that if built would have covered Lincoln's Inn Fields with a large Greek Revival building, this rectangular building would have been over three hundred by four hundred feet, in a Greek Doric style, there would have been octastyle porticoes in the middle of the shorter sides and hexastyle porticoes on the longer sides, leading to a large central hall that would have been surrounded by twelve court rooms that in turn were surrounded by the ancillary facilities.

[73] Barry's entry, number 64,[74] for which Augustus Pugin helped prepare the competition drawings,[75] won the commission in January 1836 to design the new Palace of Westminster.

A direct result of Reid's demands was the addition of the Central Tower, designed to act as a giant chimney to draw fresh air through the building.

This involved inserting a great arch with a grand staircase at the southern end of Westminster hall, which leads to the first floor where the major rooms are located.

[108] Barry spent two months in Paris in 1855 representing, along with his friend and fellow architect Charles Robert Cockerell, English architecture on the juries of the Exposition Universelle.

[28] Additionally Barry had several assistants who worked for him at various times, including Robert Richardson Banks, Thomas Allom, Peter Kerr and Ingress Bell.

Sir Charles' relative John Hayward designed several buildings including, The Hall, Chapel Quad Pembroke College, Oxford.

On 12 May 1860 after an afternoon at the Crystal Palace with Lady Barry, at his home The Elms, Clapham Common, he was seized at eleven o'clock at night with difficulty in breathing and was in pain from a heart attack and died shortly after.

[129] There were several hundred mourners at the funeral service,[128] including his five sons, (it was against custom for women to attend, so neither his widow or daughters were present), his friend Mr Wolfe, numerous members of the House of Commons and Lords, attended, several who were his former clients, about 150 members of the R.I.B.A., including: Decimus Burton, Thomas Leverton Donaldson, Benjamin Ferrey, Charles Fowler, George Godwin, Owen Jones, Henry Edward Kendall, John Norton, Joseph Paxton, James Pennethorne, Anthony Salvin, Sydney Smirke, Lewis Vulliamy, Matthew Digby Wyatt and Thomas Henry Wyatt.

[131] Hardman & Co. made the monumental brass marking Barry's tomb in the nave at Westminster Abbey[132] shows the Victoria Tower and Plan of the Palace of Westminster flanking a large Christian cross bearing representations of the Paschal Lamb and the four Evangelists and on the stem are roses, leaves, a portcullis and the letter B., beneath is this inscription: Sacred to the memory of Sir Charles Barry, Knight R.A. F.R.S.

: The Royal Institute of British Architects impressed with the loss which the profession and the country have sustained through the decease of Sir Charles Barry, whose genius has conferred great lustre upon this age, hereby record their profound sympathy with the affliction which has fallen upon the widow and family of their lamented friend.

[133]Following Barry's death a life size white-marble sculpture (1861–65) of him was carved by John Henry Foley and was set up as a memorial to him at the foot of the Committee Stairs in the Palace of Westminster.