Everything about Thomas Ripley Architect totally explained
Thomas Ripley (1682)] -
February 10,
1758) was an
English architect. He was born in
Yorkshire, first kept a coffee house in Wood Street, off Cheapside and in 1705 was admitted to the Carpenter's Company. An ex-carpenter, he rose by degrees to become an
architect and Surveyor in the royal
Office of Works, where he was influenced by the
Palladian style, but never lost his provincial manner, which earned the private derision of Sir
John Vanbrugh and the public scorn of
Alexander Pope. His works included the site of
Houghton Hall for Sir
Robert Walpole, which was first designed by the
Palladian architects
Colen Campbell and
William Kent. These designs were greatly altered by Ripley.His appointment in 1715 as Labourer in Trust at the Savoy marked the beginning of his continuous rise through the Office of the King's works: In 1721 he succeeded
Grinling Gibbons as "Master Carpenter," and in
1726 he succeeded Vanbrugh as
Comptroller of the King's Works, largely to the influence of Walpole. Walpole also engineered an additional appointment as Surveyor of Greenwich Hospital which was completed by him.Buildings for the Office of Works included the Custom House (1718) and the Admiralty (1723-6) in London as well as the Queen Mary Block and chapel at Greenwich from 1729-1750. In 1739 he was collaborating with WIlliam Kent on designs for the New Houses of Parliament and between 1750-54 he made a great number of changes to Kent's designs for the Horse Guards.
His appointment as executant architect at Houghton was the first of a number of Walpole commissions. Here his responsibility for the applied portico and the opening of the colonnades to the garden on the west side demonstrated that he was more than a project manager. From 1725 he designed and built Wolterton Hall in Norfolk for Sir Robert's younger brother Horatio, the 1st Lord Walpole and was chiefly responsible for converting a formal park into a naturalised landscape. Until 1731 he was in charge of the major alterations at Raynham for the Townshend family.
Ripley was also involved in various speculative adventures, mainly in central London. In 1726, for example, he was the original lessee of the west side of Grosvenor Square, and although his contribution there was limited to No 16 Grosvenor Street he built a number of other houses in Central London. Furthermore, Ripley was active in promoting the scheme to build Westminster Bridge and was also involved in Richard Holt's failed attempt to develop artificial stone. Nevertheless he seems to have been an eager investor, being one of the few to make a fortune out of the South Sea Bubble.
Despite the dull and sometimes ill-proportioned character of his public buildings, his pragmatic approach and undoubted skill at managing large projects ensured that Greenwich was completed and fulfilled its function. Ripley always retained a craftsman's concern for practicality. At his masterpiece at Wolterton in Norfolk this resulted in a building of controlled austerity which demonstrated how convenience nad dignity could be achieved through subtle planning. Wolterton's ground plan anticipates those of many villas of the 1750s.
On 17 November 1737 his first wife died and on 22 April 1742 he married Miss Bucknall of Hampton, Middlesex, an heiress said to be worth 40.000. Ripley died at his house in Old Scotland Yard on 10 February 1758, aged 75, leaving three sons and four daughters. He was buried in Hampton, but no memorial survives. A Kit-Kat portrait by Joseph Highmore is in the National Portrait Gallery and his Mastership of the Carpenter's Company (1742-3) is commemorated by a plague at the Guildhall, London.
One of his sons moved into a
house he'd designed on Streatham Common
which is now called Ripley House.
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