Details of Sculptor

Surname

Lee

Alternative Surname

First Name

Walter

Initial of Surname

L

Year of Birth/Baptism

Flourished

Year of Death

1766

Biographical Details

The son of a cook named Walter Lee, he was apprenticed to James Hardy in January 1706, completed his training in 1720, and then set up his yard in Oxford Road. In the same year he took a lease on 56 Grosvenor Square and in 1728 leased a site in the same square, scheduled for development. In 1726 he presented bills to the Westminster Fire Office for repairs to the house of a Mr DuCrox, which had recently been damaged by fire. Two years later he became a director of the fire office. In June 1728 he signed a contract for £500 with Francis Seymour, to erect a monument to Sir Edward Seymour, designed by James Gibbs (1). The contract is detailed and gives directions on materials, including a purple marble for the ground and architectural features and veined marble for the circular frame surrounding the urn. Lee was responsible only for the architectural work: ‘the figure and carving about the said monument should be carved and finished by Michael Rysbrack’ (TNA Chancery Masters’ Exhibits C107/126).
This was one of several collaborations with Gibbs. Between 1733 and 1736 Lee and a carpenter, Robert Wanmer, worked on an unidentified house built by Gibbs. In 1742 Lee and a local builder, John Lane, agreed to build Marylebone Chapel for £1,000 (Archives, West of Alscot Park). Their designs were subject to Gibbs's approval. Lee was also responsible for a modest mural tablet erected in the same chapel in memory of Gibbs, who died in 1754 (2). The architect stated in his will that he wished to be buried at Marylebone and ‘that a small monument of marble, to be made by Mr Walter Lee, mason, be put up against the wall within the said church, with a short inscription on it, as shall be thought fit by my executors’ (Euro Mag 1789, 16, 169).
As a mason Lee built a house in Marylebone for Thomas Warren in 1731 (Inventory of Directors of the South Sea Company). About three years later he was working at Canons, where he received a payment of £90. In l740-4l he was paid £114 for work at Canons for the second Duke of Chandos (Ipswich Record Office, SI/2/100). He was also paid £84 for mason’s work for Sir Matthew Featherstonehaugh, who was then building a house in Whitehall. He was listed c1740 as ‘Lee, Walter, Mason, near Cavendish Square’ on the livery list of the Masons’ Company (Masons’ Co Assistants, fol 3).
The will of ‘Walter Lee, Mason of St Marylebone’ was proved on 7 November 1766. In it he requested that he should be buried, at 2 o’clock in the afternoon, ‘without pomp or feathered hearse’ near to his family in Marylebone burial-ground. He appointed his wife Clarentia as sole executor. Lee was succeeded in the business by his son, George (†1767), who was apprenticed to him in 1740. George became a member of the Masons’ Company in January 1758, was made free on 12 January 1758 and died in 1766. In the year before his death, George’s son, another Walter, was bound apprentice to him.
MGS
Literary References: Baker 1949, 199; Gunnis 1968, 237; Friedman 1984, 80, 95, 207, 305, 310, 325
Archival References: Masons’ Co, Apprentices, 1694-1795 (1740); Freemen, 1677-95, fol 40; fol 41; Court Book, 1685-1722, fol 76r; Court Book, 1751-96 (1766); WFO, DM, 343/4, 3 Oct 1728; Glyn, Mills & Co archives, Uppark Archives, both in GPC; IGI
Will: PROB 11/923