Details of Sculptor

Surname

Chuke

Alternative Surname

First Name

Michael, of Kilkhampton, Cornwall

Initial of Surname

C

Year of Birth/Baptism

1679

Flourished

Year of Death

1742

Biographical Details

He was the son of Stephen Chuke who was probably a London carver employed on decorative work at Grenville, Lord Bath’s mansion at Stowe, near Kilkhampton in Cornwall, where he married and settled in the village. His son, Michael, was baptised there in 1769. As a boy Michael Chuke was sent to London and apprenticed to Grinling Gibbons ‘who found him an apt pupil’ (Dew 1933, 11). He later returned home where he married Elizabeth Braginton in 1713. Like his father, he worked at Stowe in Cornwall, apparently under Gibbons, where he carved and signed a pulpit in the chapel (7). When the house was pulled down in 1739, Lord Cobham bought the woodwork and moved it to the private chapel of Stowe House, Bucks.
Chuke provided a handful of monuments in his Cornish neighbourhood. The latter included a headstone with a reclining figure commemorating his father (6). Its ornaments are very similar to the monument in the church to a member of the Cottell family (5). Gunnis and Pevsner have both erroneously attributed to Chuke the Royal Arms in the churches of Launcells, Kilkhampton, Stratton and Marhamchurch, which date from the reign of Charles II.
Chuke died in 1742 and was buried on the south side of Kilkhampton churchyard on 24 September. His headstone describes him as a carver. His widow survived him by 20 years, dying at the age of 78 on 1 November 1762. Roderick Dew, who wrote a history of Kilkhampton Church, stated that Chuke’s work was ‘in contemporary opinion considered little inferior to that of Gibbons himself,’ but the author gives no supporting evidence for this claim (Dew 1933, 11).
Literary References: Dew 1933, 10-14; Gunnis 1968, 101; Newham and Pardoe 2007