Details of Sculptor

Surname

Wood

Alternative Surname

First Name

Thomas, of Oxford

Initial of Surname

W

Year of Birth/Baptism

1646

Flourished

Year of Death

Biographical Details

Wood worked as a journeyman under William Byrd together with his brother Richard Wood of Oxford in 1667, when Byrd paid him a wage of £8. He was described as aged 22 and ‘of St. Peter’s in the East, Oxford, Sculptor’, when, in 1668, he took out a licence to marry Alice Beach, of Patchall, Herefs, at St Margaret, Westminster. In 1685 he lived next door to William Byrd at the corner of Smith Street, Oxford. His widow continued in the same tenement long after Thomas’s death. They seem to have had no children and took lodgers to supplement their income.
In 1679 Wood was engaged by Richard Frogley, a carpenter of the city, to work on masonry for the Bishop of Oxford’s new palace at Cuddesdon, which Frogley had contracted to build. Besides providing the stonework of the walls, Wood also supplied the doorcase of Burford stone in front of the house, but he was unable to get his money, and in 1680 brought an action against his employer. In the course of the evidence it appeared that Frogley had also commissioned a stone chimneypiece from Wood for ‘Esquire Lenttall's house at Hasely’ (3) and ‘Cornish work’ at Newington.
In 1679-83 he was the mason responsible for building ‘Dr Ashmole’s Repository’, and was paid £1,006 0s 11d in 1679-80 ‘towards the building of the same’ (Oxford, V-Cs Accts, fol 58) . Two years later he provided a chimneypiece for the repository (4). In 1693 he received £10 for setting up a chimneypiece at Water Eaton, near Oxford (5). In 1671 he carved the tablet commemorating John Myddelton at Brasenose (1), and in 1679-80 was paid £20 for the monument to Francis Junius at Windsor, erected at the University of Oxford’s expense (2). Nothing is known of him after 1693.
Literary References: Cole 1949, 65; Gunnis 1968, 440
Archival References: Wood v Frogley, OU, Chancellor’s Ct Register, HYO/A/49; Chancellor’s Ct Papers, 1680-81, fols 1 and 1v