Details of Sculptor

Surname

Strong

Alternative Surname

First Name

Edward I

Initial of Surname

S

Year of Birth/Baptism

1652

Flourished

Year of Death

1724

Biographical Details

The younger brother of Thomas Strong, from whom he inherited the family building and quarrying business, Edward was apprenticed to his brother on 2 January 1672 and no doubt assisted Thomas in his work on several of the City churches. He was described as ‘of [the] City of London, Freemason’ on 1 April 1675, when he married Martha, the sister of Ephraim Beauchamp, of the parish of St Thomas, Southwark (Lic Vic Gen). There were four children, the eldest of whom was Edward Strong II. Edward I was made free of the Masons’ Company by redemption on 6 April 1680, the same day as his younger brother, John (†1725). He became renter warden in 1692 and master in 1796. In 1691, when he bound his son Edward II, his address was given as St Benet Paul’s wharf, a convenient location for receiving stone from the family's Oxfordshire quarries.
Strong took over Thomas’s contracts after his death in 1681. He completed several of his brother’s churches and was himself responsible for the masonry and carved stonework of several more, representing contracts amounting to over £11,000. These included St Michael Paternoster Royal, St Mary Magdalen, Old Fish Street, St Mildred, Bread Street and St Clement, Eastcheap (3-6). He also worked at Winchester Palace (2), where, according to his own account, he ‘had all the designs of all the masons’ work committed to his care, by Sir Christopher Wren, the surveyor’ (Colvin 1995, 936).
His principal London commission was as a master mason at St Paul’s Cathedral, where he took a prominent part, supplying large quantities of Burford stone and contracting for the east end, the north portico, the north side of the nave and part of the dome. In 1694 he was employing 65 masons at St Paul’s (listed in the Masons’ Company general search of September that year), more than twice the number working under his fellow-contractors, Christopher Kempster and Ephraim Beauchamp. He and his son were together responsible for the lantern.The contract included a considerable amount of carved stonework (8).
Strong’s other work as a mason-contractor included Morden College, Blackheath, the Palace of Whitehall and in 1696, the first mason’s contract at Greenwich Hospital, where he worked in partnership with Thomas Hill. In 1705 he and his son Edward took the chief mason’s contract at Blenheim Palace, where they erected the whole of the main building at a reputed cost of £10,958 (10). They had recourse to litigation to attempt to recover the considerable sums owing to them when work came to a standstill in 1712 as the result of a dispute between the architect John Vanbrugh and the Duchess of Marlborough. They appear to have been unsuccessful in recouping their costs and the whole contract was clearly an unhappy business since the Duchess habitually intervened and changed her mind.
The indentures of a number of Strong’s apprentices are recorded in the Masons’ Company registers: John Miller and Richard Cowdry began their training under Thomas Strong and were turned over to Edward on Thomas’s death; Richard Duffill joined Strong’s team in 1682; Richard Webb of Burford (who trained first under John Miller) was turned over to Strong in 1690; Edward Strong II is listed in 1691, Mathew Bancks in 1692, Thomas Atkins in1700, Edward Beacham (Beauchamp) of Burford in 1705 and William Prosser in 1717.
Strong took full advantage of the opportunities for a master mason and quarry owner at a time when unprecedented building activity offered great rewards for a man of his experience. The fortune he accumulated enabled him to establish himself as a landowner in Hertfordshire, where he bought the manors of Hyde at Abbots Langley and Herons at Wheathampstead. He lived at a house called New Barns on the River Vere, near St Albans. Strong died on 8 February 1724 and was buried in St Peter’s church, St Albans, where there is a monument with a portrait bust. His lengthy epitaph states that he worked at St Paul’s ‘even from its foundations to his laying the last stone’ and adds that, with Wren and Compton, Bishop of London, ‘he shared the felicity of seeing both the beginning and finishing of that stupendous fabrick’.
IR
Literary References: Builder, 24 Sept 1864, 700-1; Knoop and Jones 1935, 20 n 2, 75-6; Wren Soc XV, passim; Green 1964 (1), 62, 98-9, 126-8, 132, 133; Gunnis 1968, 376; Colvin 1995, 936; Webb 1999, passim
Archival References: Masons’ Co, Freemen, fol 66, 6 April 1680; Masons’ Co, Masters and Wardens
Additional MS Sources: Bodleian, Rawlinson MS, 387
Will: PCC 45 BOLTON
Portraits: Bust, marble, Strong monument, St Peter, St Albans; canvas, artist unknown, United Grand Lodge of England (Colvin 1995, 936)