Alexander Copland

Alexander was born on 14 May 1774 in the parish of St Martin-in-the-Fields, Middlesex, the only surviving son of Alexander Copland, a builder, and his wife Barbara, the widow of Richard McKhartney and daughter of Richard Smirke. He had an older half-sister, Elizabeth McKhartney who was born in 1769, but his older sister Margaret Copland, born in 1772, died when Alexander was 13 and his younger brother James, born in 1777, died at the age of 12.

At a young age he was sent to a school at Sowerby, near Thirsk, Yorkshire, and at the age of 10 he was bound as an apprentice to Richard Holland, surveyor, at the Stationers’ Company. At 14 he entered the Royal Academy Schools and practiced in his father's building concerns, which involved building houses for the upper end of the London market.

Alexander’s father died in 1793 when he was 19 and he inherited his father's leasehold and personal estate, said to be worth £10,000 (spending power £869,000 today). Having been admitted to the freedom of the Stationers Company on 5 April 1796 he married Lucy, the only daughter of William Gifford of Turnham Green, 25 days later.

Alexander's interests were is not limited to housing. In the midst of wars with France there was an urgent demand for military buildings in the shortest possible time. He differed from other building contractors of the day by developing a mobile workforce of hundreds of men of all trades, whom he supplied with tools, breaking from the tradition of hiring local artisans who supplied their own equipment. To enforce discipline he employed clerks and foremen to oversee and “compel the workmen to do their duty", employing more overseers per workman than was customary at the time.

Always skilled at making and maintaining personal contacts, his first profitable military contract came in 1796 through his brother-in-law, Henry Hemsley, a surveyor in the Barrack Office. He supplied prefabricated barrack buildings to be shipped for use in the West Indies and, hot on this contract, in August he built barracks for 2,400 men at Chelmsford in the space of only five weeks. It took him three weeks to build a barracks for 300 cavalry and officers in Weymouth, ready for the King's visit in 1798. Impressed, the Barrack Master General then directed him to the Isle of Wight where, between 1798 and 1802 he employed some 700 men on a number of projects. In 1799 he was called upon to build barracks at speed in the Channel Islands for Russian troops just evacuated from Holland and by 1805, with barracks at Wheatley, Winchester and elsewhere, he had built 26 barracks at a charge of £1,464,629, (spending power £127,276,260 today) all of which passed through his own firm with the exception of about £4,000 (spending power £347,600 today) of stonework for the prestigious Windsor barracks.

Alexanders profits were exceptionally generous, being based on “measure and valuation" by the Barrack Office’s surveyors. This generosity became evident when an independent valuation of his Silverhill invoice in 1805 forced him to reduce his bill by 48%, even then leaving him with a profit margin of 15% . Neither did speed necessarily mean the highest quality workmanship, for his work at Radipole in Dorset, completed in 1804, was criticised by the Commissioners of Military Enquiry when they reported to Parliament two years later revealing that the rubble foundation of his stables was found lacking sufficient lime to remain solid. Repairs of £2,600 (spending power £225,940 today) were required within the year “which could not have been the case had the builder performed his contract with common honesty”. After 1806 his barrack building declined and he used his newly found wealth to develop and invest in top of the market civilian property.

Alexander’s most prestigious works included the Duke of York's asylum, Chelsea, built between 1801 and 1803 and the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, built between 1807 and 1812. Both were designed by John Saunders, the Barrack Office’s architect, who was probably also involved in a third important building, the Guardhouse in Hyde Park in 1798.

His work on the Duke of York's Asylum brought him into personal contact with the Duke and, in 1801, he proposed developing the Duke's house in Piccadilly, mortgaged to the bank Coutts, as a residential hotel. In the following years he began paying in installments and by 1805 had paid £37,000 (£3,215,300 today) to become the absolute purchaser of York House. With the architect Henry Holland, and his nephew Henry Rolls, Alexander brought to fruition his new concept of creating purpose-built residential apartments, the first of their kind, when York House became “Albany”, which he extended by adding two parallel rows of chambers in the gardens. Albany remains a prestigious address for the wealthy requiring apartments in the centre of town. Alexander went on to build houses for rent in Upper Cadogan Place, which he eventually sold on, he built the Covent Garden Theatre in 1809, designed by his cousin Sir Robert Smirke, and from 1811 he carried out development on the Westminster Abbey Tothill Fields estate. Although he appears on a 1817 list of architects practising in London, his only known architectural work is a thatched cottage orné of 1818 built on his Langham estate in Norfolk in the “Elizabethan style” in which he was assisted by his son Frank who was by then a pupil in Soane’s office.

According to Professor Michael H Port, his biographer, “Copland, handsome and self-confident, early used his profits in adopting an aristocratic manner of life, with country seat and townhouse, entertaining extensively, and riding to hounds; sending his three sons to Eton. He purchased in 1801 the bulk (some 76 acres) of the estate at Gunnersbury, Middlesex, formerly the property of Princess Amelia, for £10,000 (£869,000 today), and immediately erected a house, enlarged in 1816, where the festivities included cricket and archery. In 1810 he bought a thousand-acre acre estate at Langham, Norfolk, which in June 1830 he exchange for Sussex House, Hammersmith, the property of his old friend Captain Marryat, the novelist. He moved in 1812 from St Martin's Lane to a large house, 29 Great George Street, Westminster (subsequently the National Portrait Gallery), where, despite frequent attacks of gout, he entertained liberally, culminating in 1832 in a grand ball."

“Almost as soon as the continent was open to English travellers, in September-October 1814, Copland toured Northern France and Belgium. In 1819 he took his family and two servants on a four-month tour of Wales, the Lakes, Scotland and north-east England, bearing introductions to several noblemen; sent his eldest son on an unusually comprehensive European tour in 1820-2; a family tour in three carriages accompanied by three servants, through France and Switzerland to Italy, followed in August 1823-May 1824. A Middlesex magistrate, Copland fined to be excused the shrievalty of London in 1820. On his eldest son's marriage in 1826 he settled £300 (£26,070 today) a year on him and gave a reception for 350 guests. To a younger son he advanced £6000 (£521,400 today) to purchase a commission in the Queen's Bays, after three years in the office of John Soane. Copland was also a generous benefactor to hospitals, being elected treasurer of the Charing Cross Hospital. His children's travel diaries show Copland to have been keenly interested in the works of both man and nature, alike enthusiastic about visiting Crawshay’s Welsh Ironworks, Smirke’s new Lowther Castle, and Staffa’s Caves. He was, too, a committed family man, keen that wife and children share such experiences, and visiting his mother's birthplace to enquire into her family.”

“Copland died at his Westminster house, 12 July 1834, and was buried in the chancel vault of St Martins in the Field. He directed his estates and monies to be sold for the benefit of his family, all three sons receiving equal shares. By an 1827 codicil, he directed that his widow, to whom he had bequeathed 3/10ths of his estate, should receive not less than £2500 (£217,250 today) per annum during her lifetime"

MOST OF THE INFORMATION IN THIS BIOGRAPHY WAS TAKEN FROM THE PROOF OF PROFESSOR M H PORT’S RESEARCH FOR THE OXFORD DICTIONARY OF NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY WHICH HE PRESENTED TO US AFTER STUDYING THE FAMILY ARCHIVES