Gothic style, and has been characterised with truth as ‘the first professional architect whose works displayed a correct taste in imitations of ancient English architecture;’ though Pugin criticises them as ‘deficient in boldness and spirit of design, and the details are often meagre.’
Besides executing the aforesaid works in Cambridge, Essex was consulted by the dean and chapter of Ely in 1757. In the course of the following five years he restored the east front to the perpendicular, and repaired the roof of the eastern limb of the church, together with the woodwork of the lantern, which long neglect had brought into a dangerous condition. Finally, he removed the choir from its original position to the east end of the presbytery. This latter work, the wisdom of which may be questioned, was not completed until 1770. The repairs executed between 1757 and 1762 were carried out in a purely conservative spirit, every fragment of the old timber being, where possible, preserved; but, in strange contradiction to this feeling for old work, Essex recommended the destruction of the beautiful west porch, as ‘neither ornamental nor useful.’ In 1761 he accepted a similar commission at Lincoln Cathedral, where substantial repairs were much needed. Besides these he constructed an arch of excellent design under the west tower, repaved the entire church, repaired the choir screen, and designed an altarpiece and bishop's throne. These works still remain. Here, also, Essex tried to get the choir removed to the same position as at Ely, but happily without success. In 1775 he designed and put up the four spires and battlement which still crown the central tower, ‘an admirable finish to a magnificent design.’ For this and his other works the dean and chapter presented to him, in 1784, a silver salver, bearing a suitable inscription. Essex also restored the tower of Winchester College Chapel, altered Madingley Hall, Cambridge, built the steeple of the parish church at Debden, Essex, and the cross to commemorate Queen Catherine of Arragon erected at Ampthill, Bedfordshire, in 1773 by the Earl of Ossory. In building this cross Essex followed a rough sketch by Horace Walpole. He is also credited, but erroneously, with a survey of Canterbury Cathedral.
Essex married Elizabeth, daughter to Mr. Thurlbourne, bookseller, of Cambridge, by whom he had two children—James, who died an infant in 1757, and Millicent, who married, 10 May 1785, the Rev. John Hammond [q. v.] sometime fellow of Queens' College. She died in January 1787. Essex died at Cambridge, of a paralytic stroke, 14 Sept. 1784, in the sixty-third year of his age. He was buried in St. Botolph's churchyard, Cambridge, on the south side of the church, where a tomb commemorates him, his father, mother, wife, and children. He and his children are further commemorated by a tablet in the north aisle.
Essex was a man of unblemished reputation and varied accomplishments. He was the intimate friend of Tyson, Kerrich, Gough, Bentham, Cole (whose house at Milton, near Cambridge, he built. and who made him his executor), Horace Walpole, Burrough, and other well-known antiquaries. He was elected fellow of the Society of Antiquaries 23 Jan. 1772, through the instrumentality of Gough, and contributed several papers to the ‘Archæologia.’ These, if considered with reference to the time at which they were written, must be allowed to possess considerable merit, and show that Essex was the earliest architectural historian, in the modern sense of the word. As early as 1756 he issued proposals for engraving views, plans, and sections of King's College Chapel; in other words, he intended to publish a regular architectural history of the building. The scheme of this work, with several of the plates beautifully drawn by his own hand, is among the manuscripts which after his death passed into the hands of his friend, the Rev. T. Kerrich, fellow of Magdalene College, and were by him bequeathed to the British Museum. The same collection contains the manuscript and many of the illustrations for a history of Gothic, or rather of ecclesiastical, architecture, on which he was engaged for many years, and which his friends tried in vain to persuade him to complete and publish.
In 1748, when Essex was a young man of twenty-six, he became involved in a controversy with the Rev. R. Masters, fellow and historian of Corpus Christi College, respecting the authorship of a plan for adding a new court to the college. In December 1747 Masters had employed Essex to measure the ground available for building, and to draw a plan, which he soon afterwards caused to be engraved and circulated as his own. Upon this Essex published proposals for engraving and printing by subscription his own design, and shortly afterwards (20 Feb. 1748-9) wrote a pamphlet, in which he criticised Masters's design, and his whole conduct towards himself, with unsparing severity. On the whole, the charge of plagiarism is proved, and trivial as the whole controversy now appears, we cannot but admire the courage and straightforwardness with which Essex asserted his own claims against a powerful opponent.
