William Burges - Architectural Team

Architectural Team

Burges inspired considerable loyalty within his team of assistants, and his partnerships were long-lived. John Starling Chapple was the office manager, joining Burges's practice in 1859. It was Chapple, designer of most of the furniture for Castell Coch, who completed its restoration after Burges's death. Second to Chapple was William Frame, who acted as clerk of works. Horatio Walter Lonsdale was Burges's chief artist, contributing extensive murals for both Castell Coch and Cardiff Castle. His main sculptor was Thomas Nicholls who started with Burges at Cork, completing hundreds of figures for St Fin Barre's Cathedral, worked with him on his two major churches in Yorkshire, and undertook all of the original carving for the Animal Wall at Cardiff. William Gualbert Saunders joined the Buckingham Street team in 1865 and worked with Burges on the development of the design and techniques of stained glass manufacture, producing much of the best glass for St Fin Barre's. Ceccardo Egidio Fucigna was another long-time collaborator who sculpted the Madonna and Child above the drawbridge at Castell Coch, the figure of St John over the mantelpiece in Lord Bute's bedroom at Cardiff Castle and the bronze Madonna in the roof garden. Lastly, there was Axel Haig, a Swedish-born illustrator, who prepared many of the watercolour perspectives with which Burges entranced his clients. Crook calls them "a group of talented men, moulded in their master's image, art-architects and medievalists to a man – jokers and jesters too – devoted above all to art rather than to business."