Richard Cromwell Carpenter

Richard Cromwell Carpenter
Born	21 October 1812 Russell Square, London.
Died	27 Mar 1855 England
Nationality	English
Occupation	Architect
Known for	Gothic designs

Richard Cromwell Carpenter (21 October 1812 – 27 March 1855) was an English architect. He is chiefly remembered as an ecclesiastical and tractarian architect working in the Gothic style.

Carpenter was born 21 October 1812 in Russell Square, London, the son of another Richard Carpenter, a magistrate, (baptised 20 July 1788 in St. Giles, Cripplegate), and Sophia (Page) Carpenter. His parents had married in 1804 in St. James,Clerkenwell, London, and lived a moderately affluent family life in Russell Square.

He married Amelia Dollman, who was born about 1818 at Loders, Dorset. Their son Richard Herbert Carpenter, (born 1841 in St. Pancras, London, died 1893), was also a Gothic revival ecclesiastical architect.

Carpenter died from tuberculosis on 27 March 1855, at his home in Upper Bedford Place, Russell Square, aged 42, and was buried in Highgate Cemetery. His obituary in the Gentleman's Magazine said "it is in fact to be feared, that his laborious and zealous application to his profession tended to shorten his life."

He was educated at Charterhouse School and then articled to the architect John Blyth. He soon became enthusiastic about Gothic architecture and was, possibly when aged only nineteen, commissioned to draw up plans for a large church in Islington by the Rev. Thomas Mortimer. The intended site was, however, used instead for an Irvingite chapel, and the first church that Carpenter built was St Stephen, Birmingham, in around 1841, At about this time he became a member of the tractarian Cambridge Camden Society (soon to become the Ecclesiological Society) to which he was introduced by Pugin. His next major commission, also in Birmingham, was the church of St Andrew.(1844).

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