Details of Sculptor

Surname

Stafford

Alternative Surname

First Name

Francis, of Norwich

Initial of Surname

S

Year of Birth/Baptism

1688

Flourished

Year of Death

1745

Biographical Details

Stafford was a monumental mason and the clerk at Norwich Cathedral from 1711 until his death. On 26 June 1711 he married Rebecca Aldham and they had three chidren, including a son, Francis, a mason, who died in 1746-7, whilst on the King’s service in Canada. Stafford was parish clerk at St Mary-in-the-Marsh, Norwich for 34 years, and was both general apparitor in the diocese of Norwich and beadle of the poor men at the time of his death. He had a house in the Cathedral cloisters and a shop near Popinjay, Tombland, Norwich.
On 16 September 1732 he advertised in the Norwich Mercury that he sold ‘Monuments and Grave-stones of all sorts viz. Mural Monuments, Altar-Tombs, Black Marble Grave-Stones, with Coats of Arms well carved’ and he added ‘Specimens of his Performance may be seen in the Cathedral Church of Norwich, and many other placed in the City and County’. A second notice in the Norwich Gazette, on 25 June 1743, announced that he had ‘... a stock of black marble gravestone, a variety of Italian marble and a shipload of Portland Stone. He continues to sell monuments of divers sorts of marble and other stone, altar tombs, gravestones, marble tables, coats of arms with their proper embellishments and all other ornaments for monuments or gravestones well carved’. His widow carried on the business from the same premises.
Gunnis said of him that ‘his architectural monuments are well carved, the most interesting being to Mrs Hodgson (4) which has a central Corinthian column standing in front of a pyramid’ (Gunnis 1968, 365). (Add. inf. David Cubitt, John Bayliss)
Literary References: Linnell and Wearing 1952, 15, 24, 30
Archival References: RG/JP, 8, 1340v
Will: PCC PROB 11/757 D&C will, vol V, fol 244