Details of Sculptor

Surname

Gayfere

Alternative Surname

First Name

Thomas II

Initial of Surname

G

Year of Birth/Baptism

1720

Flourished

Year of Death

1812

Biographical Details

The eldest son of Thomas Gayfere I and Mary, née Townsend, he was born on 31 August 1720 at Ratcliffe Street, St Dunstan’s, Stepney. In 1734 he was apprenticed to Andrews Jelfe. He became free on 30 June 1743, and on 3 March 1752 married Frances, the daughter of Edmund Le Neve. It was probably he, rather than his father, who in 1756 built 18, Cavendish Square for Thomas Bridges as one of a team of craftsmen including Benjamin Carter, who were working under the architect Henry Keene. In 1760 Gayfere, Carter and several other craftsmen appeared in a conversation-piece commissioned from the painter Robert Pyle as a gift for Keene. The central figure is Keene himself, pointing to a plan on the table for an unidentified building. Gayfere is in the central foreground leaning over his chair, apparently engaged in a dispute with Carter.
Gayfere was appointed master-mason to Westminster Abbey by October 1762 when his name and position were mentioned in the Abbey records. He remained the sole holder of this post until 7 December 1802, when the patent was confered again jointly to him and his son, Thomas Gayfere III. His work there included the removal of 'several old monuments' in the St Nicholas Chapel in 1779 to make way for the large memorial to the Duchess of Northumberland by Nicholas Read and Robert Adam (Alnwick Archives, SY U/1/111, quoted in Aymonino 2010, 296).
In 1773 he built (and helped design) the Portland stone front of Horace Walpole’s chapel at Strawberry Hill at a cost of £230 6s. Gayfere’s close knowledge of the gothic architecture of Westminster Abbey enabled him to produce one of the most authentic approximations of the true medieval style at Walpole’s mock-gothic mansion. Gayfere was also responsible for the chimneypiece in the great north bedroom (1) and for masons’ work, for which he was paid £50 in June 1774. In 1773 he became Master of the Masons’ Company. During the same period Gayfere worked for Sir Roger Newdigate. In 1768-69 he carried out repairs to Harefield Church, Middx, for which he received £53, and in 1779 he was paid £259 for work on Newdigate’s house in Spring Gardens, London (Newdigate Archives). Gayfere also acted as a stone merchant and in 1773 supplied materials for the building of Osterley Park by Robert Child.
His wife Frances died on 22 March 1770 and was buried in Westminster Abbey. Gayfere himself died on 4 April 1812, and was buried on 10 April in the west cloisters of the Abbey. His estate was sworn at under £10,000, and was administered by his only surviving child, Thomas Gayfere III.
MGS
Literary References: London Marriage Licences; Chester 1876, 483; Toynbee 1927, l56-7; Smith 1945, 556-7, 868; Gunnis 1968, 165-6; Crook 1973, 1726-30
Archival References: Masons’ Co, Freemen, fol 25; Court Book, 1751-96 (14 June 1773); LMA Acc 85/f223; GPC
Portraits of the Sculptor: Robert Pyle, conversation piece, 1760, formerly Buxted Place, Sussex, destroyed