John Thorpe

Architect

1565 – 1655

1

Who was John Thorpe?

John Thorpe or Thorp was an English architect. Little is known of his life, and his work is dubiously inferred, rather than accurately known, from a folio of drawings in the Sir John Soane's Museum, to which Horace Walpole called attention, in 1780, in his Anecdotes of Painting; but how far these were his own is uncertain.

He was engaged on a number of important English houses of his time, and several, such as Longleat, have been attributed to him on grounds which cannot be sustained, because they were built before he was born. In 1570 when he was five years old, he laid the foundation stone of Kirby Hall, Northamptonshire his father being the Master mason of the project. He was probably the designer of Charlton House, in Charlton, London; the original Longford Castle, Wiltshire; Condover Hall and the original Holland House, Kensington; and he is said to have been engaged on Rushton Hall, Northamptonshire, and Audley End, Essex.

Thorpe joined the Office of Works as a clerk, then practised independently as a land surveyor. From 1611 he was assistant to Robert Tresswell, Surveyor-General of Woods South of the Trent.

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Born
1565
Nationality
  • England
Profession
Died
1655
London

Submitted
on July 23, 2013

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