The Streatham Society
  • Home
  • Blogs & Posts
  • Talks
  • Newsletters
  • Publications
  • Donations
  • Membership
  • Events
  • Guided Walks
  • Virtual Self Guided Walks
  • Photo Gallery
  • Research and Queries
  • Planning and Regeneration
  • Heritage and Conservation
  • WW1 Roll Of Honour
  • Privacy Policy
  • Contact
  • Instagram posts
  • Archive News
  • Members' Page

John Mallcott the Stonemason who built the National Gallery

22/12/2021

3 Comments

 
Picture
John Mallcott III was a Stonemason, part of the Mallcott dynasty of stonemasons. He built the National Gallery. **He died On This Day 22 December 1850**

He lived at Carlton Villa, 54 Streatham Hill (source Census 1841) which was also known as Stone House. Demolished in 1927 for the errection of Telford Court.

*He was responsible for the demolition of a number of London's old buildings during the course of his trade and is reported to have built his Streatham home from stones reclaimed from various buildings he had demolished. including masonry from the Royal Mews which was reputed to date back to the time of James the first *(John W Brown)

John Mallcott was was apprenticed to Samuel Ireland in 1792 and became free in 1799. He married Louisa Susannah Grace at Grey Friars church on 30 August 1804. By 1809 he had been taken into the family business and in 1811 he received a press notice for his monumental tablet to William Hawes, founder of the Humane Society.

The Gentleman’s Magazine illustrated the work, described as a ‘neat and elegant’ slab with a ‘small but correct’ portrait-medallion of Hawes. The magazine hailed the sculptor as ‘an ingenious young artist’ (GM 1811 vol 81, pt I, 307, 313). The firm produced numerous monuments and tablets over the next 30 years, described by Gunnis as ‘mostly dull’, though he considered the monument to Sir Wharton Amcotts , designed by William Kinnaird, to be ‘really rather a charming work’.
In 1821 the Gentleman’s Magazine illustrated Mallcott’s monument to Robert Wells , a Greek stele with palmette brackets and acroteria, and relief carvings of the two sides of a medal awarded to the deceased by the Royal Society. On the engraving Mallcott is described as a ‘Statuary’ of 12 Newgate Street, so he clearly took this aspect of the business seriously. In 1824, he provided carved ornaments for the new Post Office

The firm continued to be involved principally in masonry work. Mallcott succeeded his forebears as mason to the College of Physicians, he became the principal mason working on the new National Gallery and the Insolvent Debtors' Court in Lincoln’s Inn Fields and in 1820 he was employed at Stationers’ Hall. In 1823-4 he built the Lombard Street premises of the bankers, Glyn Mills and Co at a cost of £2,278.

In 1830-31, he was warden of the Masons’ Company, and in 1832 he became master. In 1845 The Builder illustrated a view of St Bartholomew’s Hospital, which the firm had cased in Portland stone ten years earlier, and referred to Mallcott as a ‘practical mason who has been engaged for fifty years in repairing old Churches and raising new buildings’ (Builder 1845, 78).

Mallcott’s will was proved in January 1851. He left houses in Newgate Street and Streatham Hill, as well as a lease on stonemasonry premises in West Street in the parish of Saint Sepulchre. To his second wife, Mary Ann, he left household goods and ‘detached articles of sculpture,’ as well as ‘all machinery, implements, utensils, plant, stock ... employed by me in my business of a stone-mason’. His various premises were left in trust for the seven children of his second marriage.
​
(Source extracts A Biographical Dictionary of Sculptors in Britain, 1660-1851)
3 Comments
Kelly Mallcott
16/1/2022 01:08:54 am

I enjoyed reading this in 2022! Is there a resource to contact for other information available about the Mallcott family?

Reply
Mark Bery
16/1/2022 01:46:35 am

Kelly - are you related? Yes John Brown our Archivist will have more information. Can you email me on streathamsoc@gmail.com

Reply
Chris Mallcott
16/1/2022 03:46:32 am

Great read. Very interesting family history.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    Mark Bery, Secretary Streatham Society

    Archives

    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020

Next Meeting


Our next event is on 6th September 2022 a  talk on Art and Music Hall and Variety by Alison Young  at 7:30pm at St Leonard's Church

​Newsletter 249 is out for delivery in the Streatham area and posted to those further afield to all members 

We now accept 
membership from overseas provided we receive the subscription in sterling




​

Social media & email

Picture