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John Thorpe or Thorp (c.1565–1655?; fl.1570–1618) was an English architect.


Life

Little is known of his life, and his work is dubiously inferred, rather than accurately known, from a folio of drawings in the Sir John Soane's Museum, to which
Horace Walpole Horatio Walpole (), 4th Earl of Orford (24 September 1717 – 2 March 1797), better known as Horace Walpole, was an English writer, art historian, man of letters, antiquarian, and Whigs (British political party), Whig politician. He had Strawb ...
called attention, in 1780, in his ''Anecdotes of Painting''; but how far these were his own is uncertain. He was engaged on a number of important English houses of his time, and several, such as Longleat, have been attributed to him on grounds which cannot be sustained, because they were built before he was born. In 1570 when he was five years old, he laid the foundation stone of Kirby Hall, Northamptonshire his father being the Master mason of the project. He was probably the designer of Charlton House, in Charlton, London; the original Longford Castle, Wiltshire;
Condover Hall Condover Hall is an elegant Grade I listed three-storey Elizabethan sandstone building, described as the grandest manor house in Shropshire, standing in a conservation area on the outskirts of Condover village, Shropshire, England, four miles ...
and the original Holland House,
Kensington Kensington is a district in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in the West End of London, West of Central London. The district's commercial heart is Kensington High Street, running on an east–west axis. The north-east is taken up b ...
; and he is said to have been engaged on Rushton Hall, Northamptonshire, and Audley End, Essex (with
Bernard Janssens Bernard (''Bernhard'') is a French and West Germanic masculine given name. It is also a surname. The name is attested from at least the 9th century. West Germanic ''Bernhard'' is composed from the two elements ''bern'' "bear" and ''hard'' "brav ...
). Thorpe's major-but-little-trumpeted contribution to world architecture is the humble and now-ubiquitous corridor "for a house in Chelsea", London, England, in 1597, allowing "independent access to individual rooms". Previously, the fashion was the so-called ''enfilade'' arrangement of rooms in a dwelling in which each room led to the next via connecting internal doors. The enfilade remained popular in continental Europe long after the corridor was widely adopted in England. Flanders believes Thorpe's inspiration was the one-sided covered walkway common in monastic cloisters. Given their similarities, this is a reasonable ''prima facie'' conjecture. Thorpe joined the Office of Works as a clerk, then practised independently as a land surveyor. In August 1605 the Earl of Dorset wrote to "Mr Thorpe" to survey and make "plots" for the rebuilding of Ampthill for Anne of Denmark and Prince Henry.''HMC Salisbury Hatfield'', vol. 17 (London, 1938), pp. 349–50. From 1611 he was assistant to Robert Tresswell, Surveyor-General of Woods South of the Trent. He retired in the 1630s but seems to have lived to an advanced age, dying around 1655.


Architectural works

* the Jacobean Royal extension at Apethorpe Palace, Northamptonshire * Aston Hall,
Aston Aston is an area of inner Birmingham, England. Located immediately to the north-east of Central Birmingham, Aston constitutes a ward within the metropolitan authority. It is approximately 1.5 miles from Birmingham City Centre. History Aston wa ...
* Audley End, Essex * Bramshill House, Hampshire (attributed) *Thornton College, Lincolnshire, for Sir Vincent Skinner c1607-1610 * Charlton House, London *Holland House, Kensington * Kirby Hall, Northamptonshire * Longford Castle, Wiltshire * Rushton Hall, Northamptonshire * Somerhill House, Kent


Gallery

File:Charlton House 01.jpg, Charlton House, Greenwich File:Holland House from The Queen's London (1896).jpg, Holland House, Kensington, it was bombed in the London Blitz and only a wing survives File:Longford Castle rear.jpg, Longford Castle, Wiltshire File:Audley End House - geograph.org.uk - 70520.jpg, Audley End, Essex, this is the surviving fragment, there used to be a great courtyard in front of this range of buildings File:Somerhill - geograph.org.uk - 191792.jpg, Somerhill House, Kent, designed by Thorpe in 1611


Notes


References

* * *
H. M. Colvin Sir Howard Montagu Colvin (15 October 1919 – 27 December 2007) was a British architectural historian who produced two of the most outstanding works of scholarship in his field: ''A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects, 1600–1840 ...
, ''A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects, 1600–1840'' (1997) {{DEFAULTSORT:Thorpe, John 16th-century English architects 1650s deaths Year of birth uncertain 17th-century English architects