Francis Smith

Francis Smith of Warwick (1672–1738) was an English master-builder and architect, much involved in the construction of country houses in the Midland counties of England. Smith of Warwick may refer also to his brothers, or his son. Architectural work The county town of Warwick had been devastated by a fire in September 1694, and the projects involved in its rebuilding gave the Smith brothers their first prominence, which they retained for decades by a universal reputation for scrupulous honesty and competence. Howard Colvin, plotting their known commissions on a map, remarked that nearly all of them lay within a fifty-mile radius of their mason's yard, the "Marble House" in Warwick. The antiquary Daines Barrington noted in 1784, after viewing several Smith of Warwick houses, found "all of them convenient and handsome" despite changes in taste. Colvin summarised the elements by which a Smith house is easily recognizable: three storeys, with the central three bays emphasized by a slight projection or recession; uniform fenestration with exterior detail confined to keystones, architraves, quoins and a balustraded parapet, which was the most significant modernisation of a formula derived in essence from the late seventeenth-century model typified by Belton House. In the plans there was invariably a hall backed by a saloon in the centre, with a staircase set to one side. In spite of some splendid effects achieved by plasterwork and joinery, Colvin noted that "the spatial effects are simple and unenterprising".