William Halfpenny

They were a popular alternative to the very expensive architectural treatises by British authors such as Colen Campbell and James Gibbs, or foreigners such as Serlio or Palladio (Halfpenny published a short work "correcting" some of the latter's mistakes).

[1] In 1723, he was paid for a design for Holy Trinity Church, Leeds which was never executed, and his book Practical Architecture (1724) was dedicated to Yorkshire landowner and Member of Parliament Sir Thomas Frankland.

The Art of Sound Building (1725) was dedicated to the Parliamentary official Sir Andrew Fountaine, and in 1726 he submitted a design for a bridge across the River Thames at Fulham.

Batty Langley mentions him in his book Ancient Masonry (1736) as "Mr William Halfpenny, alias Hoare, lately of Richmond in Surrey, carpenter.

[4] Only one other work which can be positively identified as Halfpenny's and of which traces survive is a "Chinese" bridge built for Lord Deerhurst (later the sixth Earl of Coventry) at Croome Park, Worcestershire in 1747–48.

Plate 55, "The Elevation of a Chinese Gazebo", from Rural Architecture in the Chinese Taste , 1755, in which the word " gazebo " is first recorded in English
The Coopers' Hall, Bristol, one of the largest and most certain attributions to Halfpenny
The recreated Chinese Bridge at Croome Court, to Halfpenny's design
Black Castle, Bristol , perhaps by Halfpenny
Illustration from critique of Halfpenny's Perspectiva facilitata published in 1734 Acta Eruditorum