Details of Sculptor

Surname

Wise

Alternative Surname

First Name

Thomas II

Initial of Surname

W

Year of Birth/Baptism

Flourished

1678-94

Year of Death

Biographical Details

The son of Thomas Wise I, he ran a large Portland stone business for many years and was a mason-contractor employed on the construction of St Paul’s Cathedral. Wise and his partner Thomas Gilbert supplied Portland stone for St Paul’s from 1678 onwards, for Winchester Palace in 1683 and for the water gallery at Hampton Court as late as 1690. The Winchester Palace stone contract describes the partners as ‘of the Isle of Portland’ but a contract for St Paul’s Cathedral, dated 23 December 1680, refers to them as ‘Thomas Gilbert of ye Isle of Portland and Thomas Wise of St Olave’s, Southwark’ (Wren Soc, VII, 32-3; XVI, 19).
Wise was made free of the Masons’ Company in 1684, probably by patrimony. He became an upper warden in 1694 and master of the Company in 1698. He he seems to have been working with his father at St Paul’s in 1685, since there is a note by Thomas Wise I in the Acquittance Book, under the date 4 July 1685, authorising a payment to his son. In December 1685 Wise took over his father’s work at the Cathedral, in partnership with Thomas Hill I. At the time of the general search in 1694 Wise and Hill employed 16 masons at St Paul’s. In 1698 they contracted to carry out the stonework of the south west quarter of the dome and they continued to work on the building until 1707. Between them they received payments of £24,509. Their work included carved stonework, such as scrolls, festoons, capitals at £15 a face, ‘window scrowles’ at £6 each, the keystone of the great window on the inside of the portico and some of the shields in the wreaths of the nave cupolas (2).
It was probably Thomas Wise II (not his father) who succeeded Joseph Cartwright as mason for the Bridge House, London Bridge, in 1684. He received an annual salary of £4 and regularly supplied stone and effected repairs. In 1685 he was paid £50 for the ‘Neece’ for the statue of Charles II at Southwark town hall (Bridge House Rentals, 1682-86) (1). Thomas Wise was still master mason at the Bridge at the end of September 1694. Samuel Peareman, who began work at the Bridge in July 1684, was apprenticed to him the following October. Two further apprentices are recorded: Thomas’s son, John Wise, was bound to him on 4 December 1689 and he was joined by Robert Blake on 24 November 1690. Both worked at the Bridge.
Literary References: Knoop and Jones 1935, 38-9; Wren Soc, IV, VII, XIII, XIV, XV, VXI, passim; Gunnis 1968, 438; Webb 1999, 4, 25
Archival References: Masons’ Co, Court Book, 1695-1722, fol 31 r; Masons’ Co, Masters and Wardens