Details of Sculptor

Surname

Lumley

Alternative Surname

First Name

John, of Northampton

Initial of Surname

L

Year of Birth/Baptism

1654

Flourished

Year of Death

1721

Biographical Details

He was the only son of John Lumley of Harlestone, Northants, where his family had been masons since the middle ages. In 1686 he was made free of the London Masons’ Company as a ‘foreign member’ (Masons’ Co, Freemen, fol 40, 29 April) and in 1703 he became a freeman of Northampton ‘gratis’, in repayment of a debt owed to him by the corporation (Town Archives in GPC). He established a yard in Northampton and worked there as a surveyor and master mason until his death in November 1721.
The 2nd Earl of Nottingham employed Lumley to supervise the building of Burley-on-the-Hill, Rutland, between 1697 and 1705 and then, on Lord Nottingham’s recommendation, his friend, the 1st Lord Ashburnham, employed him as surveyor at Great Park House, Ampthill, Beds, 1704-7. A letter from Ashburnham to Lumley of November 1706 expressed anxiety at the non-arrival of alabaster ‘promised’ by Lumley and asked for the carrier’s name. There can have been no further frustrations for in the following year Ashburnham recommended Lumley to a neighbour, John Chester, ‘as a friend and very able workman’ (Ashburnham letterbook, 7 Nov 1706, 13 April 1707, ASH 846, ASH 847). Lumley drew up plans for rebuilding the south range of the front court at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in 1719 and superintended the work until his death two years later. He surveyed Aynho Park, Northants, in 1698 (although no structural work was carried out at that time), undertook unspecified work at Cottesbrook Hall from 1702 onwards and examined the defective spire at Greens Norton church in 1718.
In his will, dated 10 November 1721, Lumley left half his marble and alabaster and all his working tools to his apprentice William Swann and the other half to the stonecarver Samuel Cox I, whom he described as ‘my loving kinsman’.
Literary References: Gunnis, 1968, 246; Harris 1956, 1239; Houfe 1971, 1086; Colvin 1995, 628
Archival References: GPC