Details of Sculptor

Surname

Stretton

Alternative Surname

First Name

William, of Nottingham

Initial of Surname

S

Year of Birth/Baptism

1755

Flourished

Year of Death

1828

Biographical Details

The son of Samuel Stretton, a builder of Nottingham, who erected Colwick Hall in 1776 and the grandstand on Nottingham racecourse in the following year. In 1778 the younger Stretton, who had just married, took over the yard of F Radcliffe at Nottingham, and advertised in the local press that he made ‘monuments, chimney-pieces, marble sideboards, Indian inkstands, etc’ (Gunnis 1968, 375).
He joined his father c1787, and together they were responsible for a number of buildings, including Arkwright’s cotton-mill at Hockley in 1790 and the park gateway for Lord Middleton at Wollaton Hall, Notts. In Nottingham itself they built the Assembly Rooms in 1790 (to designs by John Carr of York), the seven-arched bridge over the River Trent in 1796, and the barracks from 1792 until 1799, the last named at a total cost of £20,000. He succeeded to the family business after the death of his father and on his own account built the church of St James, Standard Hill, Notts. He also rebuilt and ornamented the Nottingham Exchange in 1815 (6).
He signs the well-executed wall-monument, with roundels of bluejohn at its base, to Mary Bambrigge (1). According to the Stretton Manuscripts, privately published by G C Robertson in 1910, he was also responsible for other Nottinghamshire tablets (2-5).
Stretton was also an antiquary, archaeologist, surveyor, cartographer and collector. He died at his home, Lenton Priory, and his obituary in the Nottingham Journal states that in him ‘antiquarians had lost a fund of general and useful knowledge’ (Gunnis 1968, 376).
Literary References: Stretton 1910; Gunnis 1968, 375-6; Colvin 1995, 933