Details of Sculptor

Surname

Bumpstead

Alternative Surname

Bumpsteed

First Name

John

Initial of Surname

B

Year of Birth/Baptism

Flourished

Year of Death

- 1683

Biographical Details

‘Jno Bumpstead Carver’ was paid £47 by the Corporation of London, on 23 May 1673, for ‘work about the public stairs at Queenhithe and Grig Lane’ (Guildhall Library MS 184/4, 24v). He was employed on masonry work at the Guildhall in the same year and later worked at Christ’s Hospital (3, 4). In his diary for 22 November 1677 Robert Hooke noted that he ‘Shewd Garaway his daughters monument for Peters poor done by Bomstead’ (Robinson and Adams 1935, 329) (1). Garaway was the proprietor of a well-known coffee house in Change Alley, Cornhill. His daughter’s monument is likely to have disappeared, for the church of St Peter-le-Poer was rebuilt in 1792 and demolished in the early-20th century. In 1679 Bumpstead carved a pair of life-size wooden statues of King Charles I and King James I for Clothworkers’ Hall (2). These were destroyed in an air raid in 1941.
Gunnis states that Bumpstead was upper warden of the Masons’ Company in 1676 and master two years later. However, when he took William Kidwell as his apprentice in 1678 he was a member of the Joiners’ Company. He died in 1683 and his probate inventory survives (TNA PROB 4/5493, 19 July 1683). He may have been related to Stephen Bumpsted who took an apprentice through the Masons’ Company in 1673 and worked on the rebuilding of Trinity House in 1671, following the Great Fire of London (Trinity House Archives, in GPC). In 1683 William Bumpsteed, who was perhaps John’s son, was paid £7 for carving at the Mathematical School, Christ’s Hospital.
Literary References: Gunnis 1968, 69
Archival References: Joiners’ Apprentices, 1678, fol 143r or 8052, fol 56v; Christ’s H, TAB 12819/10, 723; 12819/11, 274