William Railton

William Railton (1800–77) was an English architect, best known as the designer of Nelson's Column. He was based in London, with offices at 12 Regent Street for much of his career. Life He was born in Clapham (then in Surrey) on 14 May 1800, the son of Isaac Railton and his wife, Margaret Maria Railton, née Scott. He was a pupil of the London architect and surveyor William Inwood. In 1825 Railton set off for a tour of Greece and Egypt. On his return to England he prepared for publication some drawings he had made of the remains of the recently excavated Kardaki Temple on Corfu. They were printed as a supplementary volume to James Stuart's Antiquities of Athens under the title of The newly-discovered Temple at Cadachio Illustrated. In the mid-1830s, Railton carried out several commissions for Ambrose March Phillipps, a Leicestershire landowner who had converted to Catholicism at an early age. On his marriage his father, Charles March-Phillipps of Garendon Park, had given him one of the family's other Leicestershire estates, on which stood the ruins of Grace Dieu Priory. There, Railton built the neo-Tudor Grace Dieu Manor, complete with chapel. Meanwhile, Ambrose Phillipps bought - with borrowed money - a tract of land in nearby Charnwood Forest to build a monastery for a community of Trappist monks, to be named Mount St Bernard. Railton designed a church and monastic buildings, once again employing a neo-Tudor style. The church was consecrated in October 1837. Railton's buildings were, however, soon replaced by a more ambitious monastic complex to plans by Augustus Pugin. For Charles March Phillipps, Railton designed lodges and gatehouses for Garendon Park, which have survived the demolition of the main house.