It seems the family home was in Dunbullog(e) in Co. Cork in Ireland (his brother Daniel owned a mill and estate there).
https://okeefeclan.org/2020/castles/
It is possible his father
was the Arthur O'Keeffe from Ballymaguirk co. Cork in Ireland who was admitted
to Gray's Inn in London in 1682-1683. (The family motto is the same but his
coat of arms is different to that mentioned above). Arthur the younger was
admitted to Lincoln's Inn in 1738 and Gray's Inn in 1740.
The Inns were colleges for lawyers. He married Isabella Casburne, widow, at her house in Piccadilly 4th April 1738 by special licence. The marriage was recorded in the parish register of St James's Church, Westminster.
He died childless - his will described him as of Bedford Row, London and his wife inherited his mansion and parklands at Bailey Park, Heathfield in Sussex. (now Heathfield Park) Isabella bequeathed all her property to her sister Mary Ann (who later married Arthur's cousin Cornelius O'Keeffe).
Bailey Park was sold in 1766 to Lt Gen. Elliot
Arthur was buried in the cloister on 3rd October 1756 and
his wife on 5th October 1762 aged 70.
Excerpts from The Marriage, Baptismal, and Burial Registers of the Collegiate Church of the Abbey of St Peter Westminster... - Page 401 Joseph Lemuel Chester · 1876
Page 403 Anstis O'Keeffe in the West Cloister. Mother of Arthur O'Keeffe
After the death of his father, William Palmer, in 1739, he took over the yard in Bedford Row near Gray’s Inn.
Shortly before his death William had supplied Henry Purefoy of Shalstone, Bucks, with a purple marble mantelpiece and chimney slab, together with a black slab for another chimneypice. Purefoy wrote a series of letters to William and then to Benjamin Palmer expressing his disatisfaction with various aspects of this work, particularly the purple marble slab, which he thought ‘must be Counterfeit, for everywhere where it looks like mother of pearl it blisters & rises up, & where it is trod upon it breaks of[f] in a thin shell & underneath is a course stone like freestone’ (Eland 1931, vol I, 58).
After Benjamin sent a
replacement slab to Shalstone in April 1741, Purefoy wrote to complain that the
new one would probably peel too, that it had small cracks which might expand
and that it was ‘not near so good marble as the mantle piece itself’ (ibid,
59). Purefoy’s letters ceased after the new slab was laid so it seems that his
fears were groundless.
Palmer’s most ambitious work is the statue of Sir William Harpur (see images below) over the old Grammar School at Bedford (23). He also provided the Harpur monument (18) which has medallion portraits and was paid £200 for both works in 1768 (Bedford School MS, account book, in Gunnis 1968, 287).
Gunnis comments
that ‘as a statuary Palmer is not as good as his father, and his monuments,
though large, are not particularly distinguished’. Those to Arthur O’Keefe and
Sir Thomas Gage feature portrait busts (15, 6). Palmer retired in 1778, and a
sale of his stock was held on 7 and 8 July that year.
Literary References: Eland 1931, vol I, pp 53-4, 58-60;
Gunnis 1968, 287
Archival References: Harpur charity documents, Bedford
School, fol 4c (bill for Harpur’s monument and statue); fol 5a, (Palmer's bill
for the above); fol 5b (letter from Palmer to the master, governors and
trustees of the Bedford Charity, complaining about lack of payment
Auction Catalogue: Palmer 1778
John Ferdinand Van der Meulen showed extensively with the Free Society and other exhibiting societies between 1765 and 1780, none of his works appears to have survived.
On 24 May 1765 he received a premium from the Society of Arts
(8) and another followed in 1767 (9), at which time he lived in Little Castle
Street, Oxford Road. (2). He was a minor beneficiary in Peter
Scheemakers’s will and conceivably worked for him before Scheemakers departed
for Antwerp in 1771. The son, Van der Meulen II, lived in Castle Street with
his father in 1778-80.
Literary References: Graves 1907, 263-4 ; Gunnis 1968, 406
Will: PROB 11/ 1082, 17 v-r (Peter Scheemakers).
William Palmer (1673–1739) was an English sculptor and
stonemason based in London. He has been described as "one of the most
important of early eighteenth-century sculptors" in England, his main
works mostly being funerary monuments
He was born in London the son of William Palmer, a coachman
in the parish of St Giles-in-the-Fields. He was apprenticed to James Hardy in
1687 but in 1689/90 transferred to the yard of Josiah Tully. He became a
Freeman mason in 1694 and returned to work in Hardy's yard. In 1696 he went to
work as an assistant to John Nost. [2]
By 1710 he had his own stoneyard at Red Lion Square. In 1718 he became official mason to Lincoln's Inn and remained such until his death in late 1739. He was married to Anne and was father to the sculptor Benjamin Palmer who took over his father's stoneyard at Gray's Inn.
c.1742. Edward Payne (†1728). Funerary
Monument, St Nicholas, Hough-on-the-Hill, Lincs
1756. William Harpur. Statue. Town
Hall, Bedford.
†1768. Sir William Harpur (†1768) and Dame Alice Harpur. Funerary Monument. St
Paul, Bedford.
1742. Sir Thomas Gage. Funerary
Monument. Hengrave, Suffolk.
1741. Stephen Master. Funerary
Monument ? Daventry, Northants.
?1742. Thomas Master. Funerary
Monument Westminster Abbey, London.
?1744.John Willis. Funerary
Monument Malmesbury, Wilts.
1757 Henry Uthwatt. Funerary
Monument †. Lathbury, Bucks.
†1770.Margaret Sparhauke. Funerary
Monument Graveley, Herts.
†1712. William Middlemore. Funerary
Monument St Wulfram, Grantham, Lincs
†1754. Thomas Price. Funerary
Monument Llangyfelach, Glamorgan.
J?1769. ohnson. Funerary Monument Sandy, Beds.
†1742.Thomas Payne. Funerary
Monument Hough-on-the-Hill, Lincs.
†1751. Sir Thomas Stepney. Funerary
MonumentSt Elli, Llanelli, Carmarthen.
?1753. Charles, Lord Stourton. Funerary
Monument Cheam, Surrey, Lumley Chapel
post-1742. Sir Roger (†1738) and Lady Maria Meredith Funerary Monument Leeds,
Kent
†1756. Arthur O’Keefe. Funerary Monument Westminster Abbey, London, cloisters
c1740. Frances Legh. Funerary Monument . St Elphin, Warrington, Lancs.
†1749.Arthur Bevan MP. Funerary
Monument . Laugharne, Carmarthen.
†1753.William Rose. Funerary
Monument East Retford, Notts
?1771.Rev Louis Monoux. Funerary
Monument Sandy, Beds
†1761. Lieutenant-Colonel John Littlehales
and wife (†1807). Funerary Monument St
Leonard, Bridgnorth, Salop.
