Details of Sculptor

Surname

Platt

Alternative Surname

First Name

George and John, of Rotherham

Initial of Surname

P

Year of Birth/Baptism

Flourished

Year of Death

Biographical Details

Platt, George 1700-1743
Platt, John 1728-1810
The Platts were a family of quarrymen, builders and masons originating in Cheshire. Around 1730 George Platt settled in the Yorkshire village of Thrybergh, near Rotherham, where he bought a quarry and established a building firm, specialising in the restoration and construction of buildings. Little is known of his training but it is likely that he was apprenticed to an uncle, John Platt I, whilst still in Cheshire. It may indeed have been his uncle’s commission to build St Paul’s, Sheffield that originally brought George Platt to the Rotherham area.
The firm employed significant numbers and although most of George Platt’s commissions were for building work, he appears also to have welcomed smaller-scale masonry carving that could be undertaken when outdoor conditions were difficult. The earliest recorded examples come from the 1740s when he was commissioned by the politician William Wrightson to build Cusworth Hall, a Palladian villa near Doncaster. As part of the contract, Wrightson ordered six marble chimneypieces in 1742, only five of which were completed by the time George Platt died from consumption the following year (13-18). The remaining chimneypiece was completed by the firm in 1744 under the direction of his son, John Platt, though at the time the firm was legally the property of George’s wife, Elizabeth, since John was a minor (18).
John Platt engaged in a wide range of connected building enterprises. As well as restoration, building and carving work, he extended the quarrying business, developed a polished marble concern and in 1765 established the Rotherham Pottery with Samuel Walker. Sculptural work remained a small part of the firm’s output but the number of recorded pieces increased under John, who took on commissions for funerary monuments and architectural sculpture as well as chimneypieces. The monuments include one to the Hopkins family in Lincolnshire (1), and eleven other known works for Yorkshire churches (2-12). Most of these relied for ornament on simple classical motifs such as urns with festoons.
The Platts met a considerable demand for architectural ornaments. In the 1750s and 1760s John worked for the 2nd Earl of Strafford at Wentworth Castle, first on restoration work and then in 1762 on ‘carved work in ye pediment of the grand portico’, which comprised a baroque roundel flanked by festoons (Wentworth Castle Papers, cited by Gunnis, 1968, 308) (21). He also provided a series of chimneypieces for which he received a payment of £129 17s 4 3/4 d in January 1765 (19). The family appear also to have acted as jobbing masons for other sculptors, for instance Thomas Atkinson, for whom they supplied carved work in 1798 for the Constable family mausoleum at Halsham (22).
John Platt made repeated efforts to encourage his sons to follow in his footsteps, apprenticing the three eldest to architects and sculptors. All three eventually joined the army. Only the youngest boy, William, retained a tangential connection with his father’s profession by becoming an engraver with a workshop in Golden Square, London. John Platt died in Halifax, W R Yorks, in 1810 and was buried in the churchyard at Rotherham Minster.
Michael Paraskos
Literary References: Potts 1959, 6-20; Gunnis 1968, 308; Hewlings 1980, 397-406; Friedman 1981, 5-13; Colvin 1995, 759-60; Tomlinson 1996, 18, 45, 85
Archival References: GPC
Additional MSS References: Wentworth Castle papers; Platt Journal