Details of Sculptor

Surname

Woodall

Alternative Surname

First Name

John

Initial of Surname

W

Year of Birth/Baptism

c1670

Flourished

Year of Death

1735

Biographical Details

Woodall was a master mason working with Benjamin Jackson at Drayton Hall, Northants in 1702. A contract between Sir John Germaine and Benjamin Jackson was drawn up on 24 August that year for an elaborate façade for the great hall and new offices, to be built as ‘set down in the ground plat of Mr. [William] Tallman’. Initial payments were to Jackson, but from March 1703 to April 1704 they were made to Woodall (Drayton Archive MM/A/674). Woodall returned to Drayton in September 1710 to build colonnades on each side of the entrance courtyard, flanking Talman’s façade. Payments continued until May 1711 (MM/A/674). Both colonnades have elaborate carved details and Woodall may have been involved with these (inf. Bruce Bailey).
He worked as a mason at several of the royal palaces and carved at least one chimneypiece (1). In the PRO is Woodall’s contract, dated 1723, in which he stated ‘I doe hereby oblige myself faithfully to serve His Majesty and in the best and most workmanlike manner to doe and performe all such mason’s work (as shall be decided by this board [of Works] to be done) at the rates and prizes aforementioned for one year’ (TNA WORK 5/145 fol 263, 26 Feb 1723). He was also the mason responsible for repairs to Hicks Hall (the Middlesex Sessions House) from 1723 to 1728 (Parliamentary Report, 1731 cited by Gunnis 1968, 441). In 1726 he was paid £73 for work at the Arlington Street house of Evelyn, Duke of Kingston (Accounts of the trustees of the Duke of Kingston, Archives, Lord Monson cited in GPC).
In the Earl of Westmorland’s archives is a letter from John Fane of Mereworth, written in 1730 to Lord Westmorland about a matter to which he had given some thought, namely, a sculptor for the monument to Lady Westmorland. ‘It is but just come into my head’, he says, ‘and I will send by the next post to Mr. Woodall my mason, the same draught and order him to make an estimate of it’. It is not known if the work materialised.
He died on 4 September,1735 and was buried at Kingston-on-Thames (GM, vol 5, Sept 1735, 559). The Northampton Mercury for 21 September reported the death of ‘Mr. Woodhill’, master mason to George I. The epitaph on his monument stated that his death occurred at his house in Mount Street near Grosvenor Square and stated that he was born in the parish of Rotherham, was mason to his majesty’s board of works in the reign of George I, and died aged 65.
Literary References: Gunnis 1968, 441
Archival References: GPC