James Burrough (architect)

Sir James Burrough (1 September 1691 – 7 August 1764) was an English academic, antiquary, and amateur architect. He was Master of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and designed or refaced several of the buildings at Cambridge University in a Classical style. The son of James Burrough, M.D., of Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, he was born on 1 September 1691. Educated at the grammar school at Bury for eight years, he entered Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge in 1708. He proceeded to the degree of B.A. in 1711, and to that of M.A. in 1716. He was elected one of the esquire bedells in 1727, resigning the post in 1749. He was fellow of his college (on Mrs. Frankland's foundation) in 1738, and Master in 1754, an office which he held until his death on 7 August 1764. He was vice-chancellor in 1759. He was a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and a collector of pictures, prints, and medals. The Duke of Newcastle, chancellor of the university, procured Burrough a knighthood in November 1759. He died in 1764 and was buried in the antechapel of Caius College. Burrough had a considerable reputation as an architect at the university, where he used his influence to introduce the Classical style which had then become fashionable. Although basically an amateur, he occasionally took a professional fee, as he did for his work at Peterhouse. In 1721 he was added to a syndicate which had been appointed two years before to build the new Senate House. The following year he submitted a "Plan of the Intended Publick Buildings", which, as the minute-book of the syndic's records, the architect James Gibbs, who had been consulted, was requested to "take with him to London, and make what improvements he shall think necessary upon it". Gibbs was undoubtedly the architect of the existing building, the design being engraved in his published work, and Burrough's share in it was probably confined to general suggestions of style and arrangement.