Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Reveley, Willey
REVELEY, WILLEY (d. 1799), architect, was probably son of William Reveley, a younger son of Willey Reveley of Newton Underwood, Northumberland, and Newby Wiske, Yorkshire, whose father, William Reveley, had married Margery, daughter and heiress of Robert Willey of Newby Wiske. Willey Reveley the younger received his professional education in London from Sir William Chambers [q. v.] in 1781–2. He accompanied Sir Richard Worsley as ‘architect and draftsman’ in his tour through Italy, Greece, and Egypt (1784–1789), and, on his return to England, pursued his profession with much activity. He made designs ‘of great beauty and elegance’ for public baths at Bath, but was not employed in executing them. He also prepared a plan for an infirmary at Canterbury, which was not utilised, and for wet docks on the Thames. The most important works executed by him were All Saints' Church, Southampton (1792–5), a classical building with pediment supported by Ionic columns and cupola of good proportions; and a country mansion, Windmill Hill, Sussex, which is given in Richardson's ‘Vitruvius Britannicus’ (vol. i. pl. 26–7). The plans for the church were modified somewhat disastrously to suit the prejudices of the mayor and aldermen of Southampton. In 1794 he edited vol. iii. of Stuart and Revett's ‘Antiquities of Athens,’ and, in the preface, replied to certain animadversions of Sir W. Chambers upon Greek architecture. His promising career, marred by a somewhat splenetic temper, was cut short by his death, at his house in Oxford Street, London, on 6 July 1799. The journal of his tour is in the library of the Royal Institute of British Architects, and the drawings of the pyramids, made by him from actual measurement, are at New College, Oxford. Some of his designs are in Sir John Soane's museum in Lincoln's Inn Fields.
[Dict. of Architecture (ed. Papworth), vii. 36; Gent. Mag. 1799, ii. 627; Nichols's Lit. Anecd. ix. 148; Davies's Southampton, p. 397; Philosophical Magazine, 1799, iv. 220–2; Hodgson's Northumberland, II. ii. 701.]