Details of Sculptor

Surname

Bromfield

Alternative Surname

First Name

Benjamin, of Liverpool

Initial of Surname

B

Year of Birth/Baptism

Flourished

1757-88

Year of Death

Biographical Details

Bromfield carved a number of chimneypieces and monuments in Wales and the northwest of England. He was christened on 2 August 1752 at Old Swinford, Worcs. His father, Robert, was a builder who held the post of clerk of works at Hagley Hall and in 1765 arbitrated in a dispute between the Newport estate and the architect Thomas Farnolls Pritchard over bills for work carried out at the Red Lion Inn and Deanery house in Wolverhampton. Benjamin was the youngest of four sons who were all employed in the sculpture and building trades. Charles Bromfield was, like Benjamin, a marble mason working from Liverpool and Robert, who was baptised at Whitchurch, Salop, on 8 July 1736, was a carver. The most successful member of the family was Joseph Bromfield (1744-1824), who worked as a plasterer, architect and surveyor in Shrewsbury and is thought to have executed plaster decoration for a number of houses associated with Pritchard.
A Liverpool trades directory for 1790 gives Benjamin’s address as Marble Street, Islington, a district close to the city centre. In 1773 he carved the imposing white and red marble chimneypiece in the saloon at Chirk Castle (17) and in 1788 Sir Corbet Corbet paid him £400 for chimneypieces for Adderley Hall (18). Gunnis noted that all his monuments and tablets had ‘good details’ and were ‘obviously influenced by those of Sir Henry Cheere’. The date of his death is uncertain but he was buried in a vault in Holy Trinity, Saint Anne Street, Liverpool.
Literary References: Gunnis 1968, 63; Beard 1975, 76, 207; Beard 1981, 248; Colvin 1995, 162-3; Ionides 1999, passim
Archival References: Bromfield Affidavit; IGI