Details of Sculptor

Surname

Bottomley Family

Alternative Surname

First Name

of Norfolk and Cambridge

Initial of Surname

B

Year of Birth/Baptism

Flourished

1729-1812

Year of Death

Biographical Details

A number of sculptors called Bottomley who may have been inter-related were active in Norfolk and Cambs during the 18th and early 19th centuries.
George Bottomley went into partnership with Robert Singleton about 1729, and together they sign two monuments in Norwich (1, 2). The partnership was dissolved by 31 December 1737, when an advertisement in the Norwich Mercury announced that Robert Page had bought their stock-in-trade.
William Cole, the antiquary, noted that the cartouche tablet to John Stevenson at Newton, near Cambridge, was the work of ‘Bottomley, a mason in Cambridge, who was to have thirty guineas for it’ (BL Add MS 5803, cited by Palmer 1932, 258) (4). This was probably Charles Bottomley. He signs the obelisk commemorating Gregory Wale, erected on a hill between Shelford and Newton, and a ledger to Elizabeth Wenyade at Brettenham in Suffolk (7, 3). He is known to have taken Robert Grumbold apprentice on 10 July 1741, but turned him over to Richard Allen the Elder of Stretton, Rutland the following year. At this time Bottomley’s address was given as in the parish of Great St Mary, Cambs (Cambridge RO P26/14/44 and 46, inf Jon Bayliss). He married Susannah Flowerday at St James, Bury St Edmunds in 1749. His widow appears to have carried on the business after his death for in 1757 she was paid for ‘mason’s work to the back of the Senate House’ (Vice-Chancellor’s Accounts, cited by Gunnis 1968, 59).
In 1778 another Charles Bottomley, of Wells-next-the-Sea, Norfolk, advertised that he could execute ‘Chimney Pieces, Monuments, Tombs, Grave-stones, Coats of Arms in marble or any other stone’ (Norwich Mercury, 13 Nov 1778). In 1787 he placed a notice in another local paper stating that although ‘some malicious Persons have reported he means to decline that Branch of Business ... he never had such intention; but that all Branches of Masonry will be executed at his Shop in Wells as usual’ (Norfolk Chronicle, 5 May 1787). He was buried 16 September 1803, aged 55. His son, Joseph Howell Bottomley (b1779) advertised for a journeyman stone mason in the Norfolk Chronicle on 16 November 1805. JH Bottomley was still living in Wells-next-the-Sea in 1845.
Edward Bottomley, mason, married Ann Tyzack at Wells on 25 December 1783. Their children, George and Sarah, were baptised in Wells in 1787 and 1796 respectively, although they had moved to East Dereham when tbeir son Henry was baptised in 1799. Edward Bottomley was listed in Pigot’s Directory in Dereham in 1822-3. He is likely to be the ‘Mr. Bottomley of East Dereham’ who died in 1827. George Bottomley, presumably the son of Edward named above, was listed at Holl Lane, East Dereham, in Pigot’s Directory of 1830, and at Baxter’s Row in his census return of 1841 (Norfolk RO H0107/780).
A tablet of 1791 is signed ‘Bottomley’(5) and in 1812 a Bottomley was paid £13 8s 10d for the tablet to Edward Wright at Holkham (6).
Literary References: Gunnis 1968, 59
Archival References: GPC; RG/JP, 2, 175; NP/RG; add inf Jon Bayliss