“ At the age of fourteen his taste for drawing attracted the attention of Lord Bagot, newly appointed ambassador to the pope, who took him with him to Rome, where he spent five or six years in studying architecture. He returned to England in 1766, and gained his first great success by the adaptation for dramatic purposes of the Pantheon in Oxford Street, London (1772) , a work which was destroyed by fire twenty years later. In 1776 he was made surveyor of Westminster Abbey, and in 1778 and the following years executed many important commissions at Oxford. ”

“ He built many country houses in the classic style, of which he proved himself a master. Gradually, however, he turned his attention to Gothic, the spirit of which, in spite of his diligent study of medieval models, he never understood. ”