One October day in 1645, midway through the English Civil Wars, a frail, white-bearded 72-year-old man hiding in a house in Hampshire was bundled into captivity by Parliamentarian troops. He would later be fined for his ‘delinquency’ of having supported King Charles I, but he was then allowed to live out his remaining years in relative peace.
Popular history also affords Inigo Jones relative peace compared with the fanfares blown for the later, more prolific, Christopher Wren. Yet it’s Jones, born 450 years ago in 1573, who can claim to be the Father of English Architecture and the first English architect in the modern sense. He introduced a revolutionary classical renaissance style into Britain and was a pioneer of modern town planning.
Jones was
