Details of Sculptor

Surname

Pritchard

Alternative Surname

First Name

Thomas Farnolls

Initial of Surname

P

Year of Birth/Baptism

1723

Flourished

Year of Death

1777

Biographical Details

Pritchard was an architect with a successful practice in Shrewsbury, who designed funerary monuments, chimneypieces and architectural ornaments. He was born in Shrewsbury and baptised at St Julian, Shrewsbury on 11 May 1723, the son of a joiner, John Pritchard, and his wife Hannah, née Farnolls. His own background was also as a joiner, but from the late 1740s he developed a quite extensive professional practice in Shropshire and the neighbouring counties. In 1748 he started work on rebuilding St Julian, Shrewsbury, and during the next three decades he worked on houses, public buildings and churches. He is remembered primarily as the designer of the first cast-iron bridge, which was constructed, with some modifications, by Abraham Darby, over the river Severn at Coalbrookdale in 1777-79.
An album of Pritchard’s drawings for chimneypieces and architectural details in the Library of the American Institute of Architects in Washington DC (reproduced in full by Ionides 1999) shows that he was a competent designer of decorative features in various styles. Many of these designs are annotated with the names of the carvers who executed them, details of the hours they worked and payments disbursed. Three carvers, John Nelson, Gaspar Van Der Hagen of Shrewsbury and Swift of Shrewsbury were regularly employed to work from his designs, while Danders and Halley were used occasionally. It was quite common for two or three carvers to co-operate on a single commission. For example Pritchard employed Nelson for six and a half days, van der Hagen for eleven and half days and Danders for one day, carving a rococo chimneypiece for Miss Leighton’s dressing room at Condover Hall, Salop. The high quality of surviving ornaments at houses such as Hatton Grange and Bitterley Court, both in Shropshire, attests to the skill of Pritchard’s team of craftsmen.
As well as decorative features for houses, the album includes designs for two funerary monuments (6, 7). The architect signed eight other known monuments: the Lloyd (2) is in the manner of James Gibbs and the Acton is in the gothic style (4). Several feature coloured marbles combined with delicate rococo decorative details, and that to Sir Richard Lyster, a Shropshire landowner and an MP, also includes a pair of mourning putti flanking an urn (7). The largest and most elaborate, commemorating Sir Whitmore Acton, is decorated with an eclectic mixture of classical, rococo and gothic motifs (4). Pritchard’s annotated design for Richard Ward Offley’s monument is a tablet with a broken scrolled pediment enclosing a coat of arms in a rococo cartouche, decorated with bell-flower swags and crossed palm-fronds (8). A note on the drawing indicates that it took Nelson, van der Hagen and Swift more than ten weeks in total to complete the work. The other monuments are less well documented, but it seems likely that they were also executed by Pritchard’s usual carvers.
He died on 23 December 1777 and was buried at St Julian, Shrewsbury, where there is a tablet to his memory. His wife, Eleanor Russell, and three of their four children predeceased him.
For works designed by Pritchard see separate entries for John Nelson of Shrewsbury, Gaspar van der Hagen, Swift, Danders and Halley, all of Shrewsbury.
EH
Literary References: Gunnis 1968, 311; Harris 1968, 17-24; Colvin 1995, 782-4; Ionides 1999, passim; ODNB (Leach)
Will: PROB 11/1043
Collections of Drawings: book of four designs for a house for Mr Good, RIBA Drawings Coll SD64/3(1-4); designs for chimneypieces including two for Condover Hall, Salop and a neoclassical pier glass frame, Pritchard Drawing Book (Ionides 1999, repr)
Pritchard Drawing Book,Portraits of the Sculptor: anon, canvas, Ironbridge Gorge Museum 1978.218.1