Architect born in London, the eldest son of the architect James Wyatt. After getting into debt at Oxford, he went to work with the East India Company in India. Here he was taken up by the Wellesley family, and in 1807 he accompanied Arthur Wellesley (the future 1st Duke of Wellington) to Dublin, as secretary, when the latter was appointed Chief Secretary in Ireland. In 1809 Wyatt returned to London and began practising as an architect, with such success that, in 1811, he won the competition for the rebuilding of the Theatre Royal Drury Lane. In 1813 he succeeded his father as Surveyor of Westminster Abbey. In 1815–16 he made designs for the colossal palace, with which it was intended to reward the Duke of Wellington for his services to the nation. B.D. Wyatt’s most distinctive achievements were the interiors of the three great London houses, with which he was involved in the 1820s and 30s, York House, Londonderry House and Apsley House. With his brother, Philip, he revived early eighteenth-century French decorative style to create effects of richness and urbane elegance, within somewhat austere and conventional exteriors. His last important commission was for the Duke of York’s Column, Waterloo Place, London (1831–34).
Bibliography (updated 2025): H. Colvin, A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600–1840 (3rd edn), New Haven and London, 1995; J.M. Robinson, ‘Wyatt, Benjamin Dean (bap. 1775, d. 1855)’, ODNB (online edn), (2004), 2015; P. Ward-Jackson, Public Sculpture of Historic Westminster. Volume 1, Liverpool, 2011, pp. xxiii, xxv, xxxv, 124, 276, 385–88, 408.
Philip Ward-Jackson, 2011