Details of Sculptor

Surname

Wynne

Alternative Surname

First Name

Robert, of Ruthin

Initial of Surname

W

Year of Birth/Baptism

Flourished

Year of Death

1731 ?

Biographical Details

He lived at Ruthin from 1715 until 1731 and there are various payments to him in the Chirk Castle archives for work carried out for the Myddeltons. This included carving Robert Myddelton’s coat of arms in the ‘new seat’ in Ruthin church (8), and ‘beautifying the coats of arms and other ornaments of the old monuments of Chirk Church’ (7). He was also responsible for the family monument erected at Chirk by Mary Myddelton (5). This ‘striking’ work, with its three life-size effigies, is unsigned, but in the family archives there is a payment in 1721 of £180 to ‘Mr. Robert Wynne stone-cutter in Ruthin ... being ye remainder of £400 in full for ye monument in Chirk’.
The Wynn memorial (4) also has three life-sized effigies. Gunnis calls this ‘impressive’ and describes the blind Henry Wynn standing in his lawyer’s robes, extending his blessing over the flanking kneeling figures of Jane and John. Pevsner is less generous: he describes Henry on a pedestal ‘in ludicrous pose’. Pevsner attributes two other monuments to the sculptor, one to Maurice Jones (†1702) at Llanrhaeadr, Denbighs and another to Gabriel Goodman (†1673) and Roger Mostyn (†1712) at Ruthin, Denbighs.
On 2 September 1669 Simon, son of Guallott Wynne, gentleman of Llanbedr, Denbighs, was apprenticed to Peter Roberts under the auspices of the Masons’ Company. Gunnis suggests that it is possible that Simon and Robert were one and the same, for there is no trace of Robert ever having been apprenticed in London, although the carving of his figures suggests a City training.
Literary References: Gunnis 1968, 449; Pevsner, Clwyd, 1994, 231, 274; Webb 1999, 37