Very much under construction.
Some notes and images regarding the Marble Industry at Westminster in the 18th Century.
This post is a series of stream of consciousness jottings with the intention of amassing the available facts from on line and printed resources, and related images and to eventually assemble them in a coherent fashion in one place.
This is a field that will require a great deal of in depth research. This post offers a first attempt to get to grips with the subject.
Anyone who knows my blogs will know that I am as preoccupied with the visual evidence as that available from written sources.
One picture is worth ...........
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The import and supply of marble and stone and the manufacturing of sculptural objects at Westminster.
The Masons and Carvers - Henry and Peter Scheemakers, Laurent Delvaux Henry and John Cheere
The Builders and Masons - Andrews Jelf and (Captain) Samuel and Edward Tufnell and their sometime partner Edward Strong and Christopher Cass, Thomas Gayfere and his son, John Deval father and son
Thomas Roper the Portland Stone Agent etc.- see
https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/N13998191
Strong and Tufnell’s Book of Entry for Masons’ Work, (Five New Churches) RIBA Library; BL Stowe MS, 412, no 77 (termination of agreement with Cass and Jelfe).
of Tangentialinterest https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/155776769.pdf
and the Marble and Stone Merchants - the Wallingers. the Chapman Birds, and the Del Medicos
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I have broached the subject previously in my post of 26 July 2025 illustrating the two marble busts of the marble importers Christopher Chapman Bird (1715 - 92) and his brother Edward by the Italian sculptor Giovanni Antonio Cybei (1706 - 1784) at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge and some thoughts on the marble merchants at Westminster.
https://bathartandarchitecture.blogspot.com/2025/07/edward-chapman-bird-1715-92-marble.html
I could not have achieved any of this without the work commenced by Matthew Craske and published in his seminal work on the subject of 18th Century monumental sculpture in The Silent Rhetoric of the Body - A History of Monumental Sculpture and Commemorative Art in England 1720 - 1770. pub Yale 2007.
I should also mention Malcolm Baker and David Bindman's work on the Monuments of Roubiliac - Roubiliac and the Eighteenth Century Monument pub Yale 1995.
As yet there is no biographies of Henry and John Cheere but the posts on this website although scattered should help to clarify both their careers (search using the box on the top left of the page).
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Setting the scene using the maps and plans online -
The problem here is that the size and resolution of the images makes the names of the streets and wharfs at Westminster difficult - the images are automatically reduced in resolution (not by me).
The Newcourt and Faithorne Map of 1658.
Map of London; top left, 'The Armes of the Right Wor:ll
Companies' of 'Mercers', 'Grocers', 'Drapers', 'Fishmongers', 'Goldsmiths', and
'Skinners', and next to it, in a framed compartment, Westminster Abbey; top
right, in a framed compartment, St Paul's Cathedral; bottom centre, a list of
London churches; bottom right, map scale, and beside it, text outlining 'a
breife Ichnograficall discription' of the city. 1658
Engraving, printed from six plates.
The extract of the map shows the original walls and enclosures of both Old Palace Yard and New Palace Yard.
126 on the map is St Margaret's Parish Church - the future premises of Scheemakers and later of Henry Cheere are visible fronting onto Margaret's Lane between Old and New Palace Yards
Image Courtesy British Museum.
https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1881-0611-254-1-6?selectedImageId=1183268001
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William Morgan's Map.
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The Strype Map of 1720.
Here no. 76 is St Margaret's Church with the Scheemaker Cheere premises to the East on St Margaret's Lane.
A Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster, by John
Strype (1720).
[New Palace Yard.] ... by a turning Passage Eastward through
the Gatehouse, [King Street] leadeth into the New Palace Yard. Which is a
spacious Place, convenient for the Reception and Standing of Coaches in the
Term Time, and Sessions of Parliament; and is graced with good Buildings well
inhabited. Here is the common Entrance into Westminster Hall, where the Judges
sit: And here is Westminster Bridge, for taking Boat, for such as are minded to
go to London or elsewhere by Water. On the South is a narrow Passage into
Channel [or Chanon] Row. Out of this New Palace Yard is a Passage on the West
through St. Margaret's Lane, North into the Old Palace Yard, a spacious Place
also well built.
London and Its Environs Described, by Robert and James Dodsley (1761).
New Palace yard, by Union street, Westminster. When King Richard II. rebuilt Westminster Hall in the year 1397, that part was called the New Palace, and being inclosed with a wall, it had four gates, of which that leading to Westminster stairs is the only one now standing. The three others that have been demolished were, one on the north, which led to the Woolstaple; another to the west, a beautiful and stately edifice called High Gate, at the east end of Union street; and another at the north end of St. Margaret's lane. Maitland.
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A Plan of the Ancient City of Westminster..............
In 1765 the address of Fourdrinier was at the sign of The Star, corner of
Craig's Court, Charing Cross.
The Plan below shows the property of Henry Cheere as newly built
The Earl of Pembroke, an amateur architect who had been closely associated with the initiation of the plans, laid the first stone at a ceremony at the beginning of 1739.
After the first two piers were completed the
Thames froze over for two months and the piers became an attraction, with
people walking across the ice and climbing up them on ladders. (The event was
recorded in a landscape painting by the artist Jan Griffer, which now belongs
to the Guildhall collection).
During the pause in work caused by the freeze, those with greater ambition for the venture pushed for it to be made entirely of masonry instead of wood. Andrew Jelfe and Captain Samuel Tuffnell (the latter being the mason to Westminster Abbey) were hired as master builders to work under Labelye.
Large trenches were dug into the river at low tide which were then
filled with timber boxes, part-filled with masonry. The boxes were sunk into
the holes, water pumped out, and further masonry added. Piling was undertaken
using a horse-powered machine invented by a Swiss watchmaker named James
Vauloué. The bridge was finished in brick, and Portland and Purbeck stone.
Work on Westminster Bridge had begun in 1738 and was completed in 1750. It is shown here in approximately the state that construction would have reached by 1742.
see -
A Description of Westminster Bridge: To which are Added, an Account of the ... by Charles Labelye pub. 1751.
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=6l9UAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA1&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=2#v=onepage&q&f=false
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Samuel Scott.
Metropolitan Museum.
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/437643
The resolution here is not as good as I would have liked but the image gives a very good idea of how Westminster would have appeared from the South Bank of the Thames.
St John's Westminster Hall, Westminster Abbey and St Margaret's Church are clearly visible
Andrews Jelfe (ca. 1688 -1759).
Jelfe was a prominent and very successful mason of Saint Margaret's, Westminster, who had served his apprenticeship under Edward Strong, died a rich man in 1759.
In addition to his official posts, first as master mason and later architect and clerk of works to the Office of Ordnance, Jelfe built up a great fortune as a mason contractor, working in partnership with Edward Strong Jr. and later Christopher Cass (1678—1734).
He held the masonry contracts for several of the fifty New Churches intended to be built in London under the Act of 1711, while his largest and likely most lucrative contract was for the construction of Westminster Bridge (1738—1747), £150,000 - which he carried out in partnership with Samuel Tufnell, master mason to Westminster Abbey.
Jelfe, as Howard Colvin notes, had aspirations to become a gentleman and purchased his own residence, Pendell House, at Bletchingley, Surrey, in 1747.
He worked on the Royal Mew in 1733 - presumably on the north range designed by William Kent
His will, which he drafted the year before he died, included property worth over £30,000 and reveals fascinating insights into his familial and professional relationships.
For his eldest son, Captain Andrews Jelfe, whom he had set up as a naval officer, he devised the mansion house in Surrey as well as thirteen new houses that he had built "in Two Rows adjoining together on the North side of New Palace Yard" ( Bridge Street removed c. 1865) unsurprisingly the bulk of his real estate going to the male heir.
His married daughter, Elizabeth Ransom wife of Griffin Ransom, of New Palace Yard received the sum of £10,000, a veritable fortune by any standards—and the €5,000 already settled on her as her marriage portion.
On top of this, Jelfe left her his "Stone Built dwelling house on the west side of Palace Yard adjoining to my working yard, where I dwell" and "All my household Goods, Furniture, Pictures, Bustos, Statues, Plate, Liquors, and other things." Clearly, Jelfe was a man of taste as well as means.
By contrast, Jelfe's younger son William, who his father rather damningly noted had "proved very idle and extravagant," was to receive £10,000 held in trust Jelfe wrote "I am in great fear he will waste the legacy" and left the monies out of compassion to my said son - notwithstanding his behaviour - t0 prevent his turning to want".
The Gayferes.
Thomas Gayfere was born in the Wapping district of London in 1720 the
eldest son of Thomas Gayfere, a stonemason, and his wife, Mary Townsend of
Burford, who was related to a family of masons in Oxford. His father moved to
the Westminster district around 1725 to work with Christopher Cass.
Gayfere was apprenticed to Andrews Jelfe in 1734. In 1762 he obtained the highly prestigious position as Mason to Westminster Abbey. In 1774 he became Master of the Worshipful Company of Masons.
Christopher Cass (1678 -1734). Christopher Cass II (d.1732).
J.E. Smith in St John the Evangelist, Westminster: parochial
memorials (1892) says “On the east side of the ground stands an unsightly
monument in granite, clumsily inscribed in huge letters to the memory of
“Chr"- Cass, Master Mason to His Maj.'s Ordnance. Died Apl.
21, 1734. Aged 58." He was employed on the construction of St. John’s Church, and on several of the other
churches built by Queen Anne’s Commission. He was also one of the original
vestrymen appointed by the Commission.” The Biographical Dictionary of
Sculptors in Britain, 1660-1851 has further details of Christopher Cass and
says that he was a “conspicuously successful master mason whose team worked in
London, Cambridge and at a number of large country houses.” They add;
He died in London and was buried in the cemetery of St John,
Westminster, under a heavy granite monument inscribed ‘Chr. Cass, master-mason
to his Maj. Ordnance. Dy’d Ap. 21, 1734’. In a report to the RIBA ‘On the
Mechanical Processes of Sculpture’ Charles Harriott Smith suggested that this
monument was one of the earliest works in England to be executed in granite,
and that ‘its mouldings, though such as would now be considered rude in form
and execution, were highly esteemed in his (Mr. Smith’s) boyhood’ (Builder,1851,
215). In his will Cass originally expressed a wish to be buried in a vault
beneath the portico of St Martin-in-the-Fields, but he substituted St John’s
burial-ground in a codicil. To Edward Strong II, ‘my friend and benefactor’, he
left £50, declaring that he owed him what ‘I and my family, under the good
providence of God, have’. He named Andrews Jelfe his executor, and bequeathed
him 100 guineas. Thomas Gayfere received £20 and ‘all his wearing apparel,
linen and woollen of all kind’.
Cass’s widow survived him and died in 1742. Andrews Jelfe,
writing in that year to William Dixon, tells him that ‘Mrs. Cass was buried
last week. She had left all her part to Mr. Bright, a young lawyer, who married
her daughter’.
For the quarrying of Stone at Portland see -
https://portlandmuseum.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/v-3-cop-final-report-lw-LR.pdf
For the Devals, Tufnells, Adye and Roper and the use of Portland stone at Cavendish Square see -
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