In partnership with George Shakespear, John Phillips developed Charles Street, Mayfair (1750) and other blocks of land in London's West End. Phillips was the "undertaker" for the whole north-west corner of the Grosvenor estate.[2] Phillips built a grand house for Lord Bateman (1759–60) at the north end of Park Lane, and next to it Camelford House (1773–74) for Thomas Pitt, 1st Baron Camelford.[3] A subcontractor for carving documented in 1773 was John Linnell, a prominent cabinetmaker.[4]
InOxford, Phillips constructed James Gibbs's wooden dome for the Radcliffe Camera and provided refined joinery in the building (1742–1750). Phillips and Shakespear were also responsible for the interior joinery of Christ Church Library (1752–1762, illustration, right).
In 1771–72, Phillips constructed the wooden bridge at Battersea, under the direction of the architect Henry Holland. It was demolished in 1881.[7]
During his career he held the post of Carpenter to His Majesty's Board of Works.[8]
From his uncle, Phillips inherited the house in Brook Street that he occupied throughout his career; it survives as 39, Lower Brook Street, remodelled by a later occupant, Sir Jeffry Wyatville.[9] In his retirement, he occupied and built Culham House, Culham, Oxfordshire, where his brother's descendants (John Phillips having died childless) joined the landed gentry,[10] continuing to live there until 1935.[6]
^Howard Colvin, A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600-1840, 3rd ed. 1995, s.v. "Phillips, John"; Colvin's account of commissions and dates is followed in this article.
^'Park Lane', in Survey of London: volume 40: The Grosvenor Estate in Mayfair, Part 2 (The Buildings) (1980), pp. 264-289, accessed 15 November 2010
^John's father, William Linnell, had executed carver's work at Radcliffe Camera (1745) and at Alscot Park; the Linnells' ongoing connections with John Phillips are traced in Helena Hayward, William and John Linnell, Eighteenth-Century London Furniture Makers, 1980, vol. I:30.
^Bernard Burke, 'Phillips of Culham House', in A genealogical and heraldic history of the landed gentry of Great Britain & Ireland, vol. 2, 1871, p. 1092
