Details of Sculptor

Surname

Townesend Family

Alternative Surname

First Name

of Oxford and London

Initial of Surname

T

Year of Birth/Baptism

Flourished

Year of Death

Biographical Details

John Townesend I, of Oxford 1648-1728
William Townesend, of Oxford 1676-1739
John Townesend II, of London 1678-1742
George Townesend, of Bristol 1681-1719
John Townesend III, of Oxford 1709-1746
John Townesend IV, of Oxford - 1784
Stephen Townesend, of Oxford 1755-1800
A well-known family of mason-contractors, they made their fortune during the great Oxford building boom of the early 18th century, during which period they were engaged in major works at 12 of the 19 colleges then in existence. In some cases it is impossible to determine which family member was responsible for a work since the records at Oxford simply say ‘Townesend’. William Townesend and George Townesend have been accorded separate entries since their works can more clearly be identified.
John Townesend I was the son of a labourer, Thomas Townesend of Oxford, and was apprenticed to Bartholomew Peisley [II?], a mason of St Giles, Oxford, on 2 October 1674 (Hanaster EB, L.5.4). By the 1690s he had emerged as the most important of several relatively minor Oxford masons. He was responsible for building work on the front range and classical gate-tower at Pembroke College (1691-4), the library at the Queen’s College (1692-5), the master’s lodgings at Pembroke (1695), the classical gate tower at Exeter College (1701-3), the kitchen-court at Blenheim (1705-11) and part of the back quadrangle at the Queen’s College (1707). One chimneypiece by a family member has been tentatively identified as his work (8) and the provision of chimneypieces may well have been a useful sideline for him and other family members. His monument in the churchyard of St Giles, Oxford is a dignified baroque sarcophagus surmounted by a flaming urn, and must have been a product of the firm (Colvin 2000, 52, repr). He had three sons who followed him in the business, William, John II and George.
John Townesend II was apprenticed in 1693 to Samuel Fulkes, a member of the Haberdashers’ Company, and was in due course admitted to membership of that Company, as opposed to the Masons’. His yard was in London at St Paul’s wharf, and from 1714 to 1717 he and his brother William were the mason contractors building St Mary-le-Strand. On 16 May 1738 ‘Messrs John Townsend, Citizen and Haberdasher, Christopher Horsnaile [II] and Mr. Robert Taylor [I], Citizens and Masons, proposed jointly to perform the Masons Work ... for £18,000 at the Mansion House’. Their competitors were Thomas Dunn and John Devall. On 17 July 1739 it was decided that all five should work jointly at the Mansion House, for a sum not exceeding £17,000 (Mansion House Comm 01/1, pp151-2, 230-1). His death is noted in the London Magazine of April 1742 as follows: ‘Died, Mr. John Townesend, one of the Common Council men for Castle Baynard Ward and brother to the late Mr. Townesend of Oxford, well known for his many noble structures in that place’. An Edward Townesend, who may have been a relation, became free in 1721, was steward of the Masons’ Company in 1727 and master in 1738.
John Townesend III was the son and successor of William Townesend. He is described as a stone carver in the list of workmen employed on the Radcliffe Library and succeeded his father as one of the principal mason-contractors for that building in 1739. He also took his father’s place as mason to the dean and chapter of Christchurch. In 1742 when James Gibbs went to Tetbury, Glos to report on the state of the church, he took with him John Townesend, ‘an eminent master builder from Oxford’. John was at that time engaged in building the stone screen in the hall of St John’s College, working to Gibbs’s designs (21). Shortly before his death he resurfaced and raised the early Tudor main front of Corpus Christi College. When he died in 1746 he owned a ‘large handsome House’ in Oxford and considerable other property (PCC 25 POTTER). His son, William, entered the church.
The nature of John Townesend IV’s kinship to other family members has not been established. He continued building in Oxford on a large scale, finishing the masonry work of the Radcliffe Library (1751), completing the Queen’s College (1757-9) and giving the convocation house under the Bodleian Library a fine fan vault (1758-9). He designed and built the graceful Ionic library at Exeter College (1779). He signed three local monuments including a graceful gothick plaque in St Mary’s church commemorating Lady Pomfret, donor of the Arundel Marbles (4). His son was Stephen Townesend, another mason, whose work on Oxfordshire buildings included the tower of Woodstock church (1785), the rebuilding of Wheatley church (1793-5) and a gothic necessary house at Magdalen College. Towards the end of his life he lived at Court Place, Iffley, a large house near the church. His foreman, Thomas Knowles I took over the business in 1797.
IR
Literary References: Gunnis 1968, 398; Jeffery 1993, passim (John Townesend II); Colvin 1995 982-4; Grove, vol 31, 234-5 (Sturdy); Colvin 2000, 43-60)