Details of Sculptor

Surname

Stayner

Alternative Surname

Stainer

First Name

Thomas I

Initial of Surname

S

Year of Birth/Baptism

c1665

Flourished

Year of Death

1733

Biographical Details

The son of Thomas Stayner, a deceased mason of St Giles-in-the-Fields, and his wife Marjorie, Stayner was apprenticed to Michael Todd on 3 February 1683 and became free of the Masons’ Company on 24 July 1690. By 1694 he had two apprentices, one of them his brother Anthony, who joined him in 1693. Two of his sons trained under their father, Thomas Stayner II, who was apprenticed to him in 1702 and became free in 1709 and William, who joined him in 1710. In 1697 Stayner lived in Goodman’s Fields, but by 1712 he had moved to Stratford-le-Bow.
He made rapid progress in the Masons’ Company for he was an assistant in 1691, the year after he became free, renter warden in 1703, upper warden in 1706 and master in 1709. An entry in the Company’s Court Book states that in 1720 he behaved improperly at the Lord Mayor’s Day dinner by ‘affronting the Master Wardens and Company’. He was obliged to appear before the Court ‘to show cause why he should not be discharged from being an assistant for the misdemeanour by him committed’, but ‘purged his offence’ with a payment of 6s. 8d (Masons Co Court Book, 1695-1722, fols 201r & v).
Whinney brackets Stayner with Edward Stanton and Thomas Green of Camberwell as mason-sculptors who used baroque elements with little understanding of baroque design. This is perhaps over-dismissive of Stayner, for he was responsible for several lively and arresting monuments including an altar-tomb to Richard Winwood erected in 1689, which has a crisply carved near-recumbent effigy in wig and plate armour, attended by a solicitous wife in quasi-medieval head-dress (1). The monument to Sir William Benson, 1712, now destroyed, made use of an urn on a square pedestal with cherubs either side and, in front of the pedestal, a kneeling skeleton with a laurel wreath, holding an armorial shield (3). Dr Thomas Turner’s memorial, 1716, is considered by Gunnis to be his most ambitious and remarkable monument (4). An architectural frame divides it into three parts: in the centre is an illusory winding-sheet carrying the inscription, knotted to curtains hanging from a baldacchino. Turner’s standing effigy in clerical robes is on one side and on the other is the twisting figure of Faith, wearing gracefully disposed draperies, carrying a church. The monument to Sir Henry Bendyshe, †1717, has twisted barley-sugar columns framing a reclining effigy of Sir Henry with a baby beside him (5).
Stayner is likely to have been responsible for other funerary sculpture, not yet identified. A memorandum of an agreement for a monument, with a design on the back dated 1 June 1725, survives in private hands: William Dunster commissioned Thomas Stayner of Bow Bridge, mason, to make a monument for his kinsman, Giles Dunster, for All Saints, Hertford. It is not known whether this was executed (Bosanquet MSS 72, cited by RG/JP, 8, 1359). By coincidence, it was on 8 November that year that the Northampton Mercury reported that a Thomas Stayner, mason, had been declared bankrupt. Since several branches of the family appear to have been involved in the craft and Thomas was a recurring family name, it is not certain that this report relates to the sculptor under discussion.
On 13 February 1727, a Mr Rice Williams wrote to Samuel Sandys MP from Pyrgo informing him that ‘Mr Stayner, a stone-cutter upon Bowbridge’ had ‘lay’d the stone upon Mrs. Cheeke in Pyrgo Chapel’. The writer, who was clearly concerned about the cost, continued: ‘The dimensions of the stone are six foot six inches by three foot two inches, so that the whole stone will be near twenty foot, which at ten shillings a foot, a penny a letter for cutting and about three pounds for the coat of arms brings the whole to about 14 pounds if you have the same sort of stone with Mrs. Cheeke … If you please to stop on Bow Bridge you may talk with this Mr. Stayner yourselves and I think he may be brought a little lower in his prices’ (Archives, Lord Sandys in Gunnis 1968, 369). The letter refers to the ledger stone in Pyrgo chapel, Essex, for Samuel’s mother-in-law, Lady Tipping, who was a daughter of Thomas Cheke of Pyrgo (9).
The names of a number of apprentices other than family members are recorded in the Masons’ Company registers. ‘Thomas Stainer’ or ‘Stanier’ took on Robert Price, who had initially been apprenticed to William Woodman I in 1692; John Atkins joined Stayner in 1705; Abel Lindel and John Sherman in 1716; Richard Daye in 1723 and John Holden in 1730, after the latter had spent three years under Robert Taylor. The number of men at his disposal supports the idea that Stayner was responsible for a considerable amount of unidentified work, perhaps including building contracts. A payment was certainly made to him in 1721 for work apparently undertaken at Ambrose Page’s brewery at Bow (S S Co Ambrose Page, no 4 in 3, p18).
Stayner died on 7 October 1733 at West Hampton, Essex. In his will the ‘Westham’ home and other property in the neighbourhood was left to his widow, Dorothy, and after her death to his favourite daughter, Mary. According to custom his goods, chattels and personal estate in the City of London were divided into three equal parts, a third of which went to his widow, another third to his six children and the final part, customarily at the testator’s disposal, to his daughter, Mary. A statue of ‘King William on Horseback’ was to be set aside since it had already been sold to Mary.
IR
Literary References: Gunnis 1968, 369-70; Whinney 1988, 140, 142; Webb 1999, 1, 10, 20, 27, 31; IGI
Archival References: Masons’ Co, Apprentices, 1702, 1710; Freemen, fol 66 (1690, 1709); Court Book, 1677-94, fol 67r; Masters and Wardens; GPC
Will: PROB 11/820 (proved 10 Oct 1733)