Robert Castell’s life is a cautionary tale – a warning how not to indulge your creativity. Dedicated to his dream, the man wound up ruined, imprisoned, sick and then dead. His misfortune, though, did lead to founding of Savannah, Georgia.

Castell was an Oxford graduate and an inheritor of a “competent estate”, but not a man of unlimited means. His passion was classical architecture, which he saw as the cure for societies’ ills. He literally thought that good buildings would ameliorate and inspire England’s urban poor.

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