- The Portway Marble Works
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| The Portway Marble Works. |
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Cuzner gives the following account of the Marble Works in his
"Handbook to Froome Selwood" in 1866:
"The Marble and Stone Works of Mr.Joseph Chapman, of Portway, Froome,
have of late years been noted for the production of choice specimens of
monumental art. The business was established about sixty-one years ago, by
the father of the present proprietor; but increased efforts have been made
by the son, during the past twenty years, to keep pace with the improved and
improving taste of the age. In the prosecution of his studies, he has
visited some of the most celebrated cemeteries, not only in this country,
but on the continents of Europe and America. The productions of this
establishment have been sent to some of our remote counties, and also to
India, the West Indies, the Cape of Good Hope, and even to New Zealand,
and are at the present time being brought into competition, both as to
quality and price, with the works of our metropolitan sculptors; the
enterprise of our townsman not only carrying his monumental erections into
the churchyards and cemeteries of London, but into those of the
south-eastern counties beyond. We can only specify a few of his choicest
works which have been open to inspection before removal to their final
destination. Among those which have been sent to a distance, we remember a
mural tablet of Purbeck marble, and banding of mosaic work in red and green
marbles, fixed in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey; and still more
recently, an altar monument, under a canopy or recess, after the style
of those of the fourteenth century which may be occasionally seen in some
of our cathedrals: this we believe, was from a design by a clergyman of the
neighbourhood, connected by marriage with one of our oldest and most
respected families; and the monument may now be seen in the most beautiful
church of the lake district, at Ambleside, in Westmorland. Other specimens
of Mr.Chapman's work may be seen in our immediate locality, but we can only
mention a few of these. In Great Elm churchyard, there is an exquisite
cross, in Italian marble, of large proportions, erected at the grave of the
late Captain Morrish; also a mural monument, of Early English design, and
of the purest Carrara marble, to the memory of some members of the Stancombe
family, in the cemetery at Trowbridge; a repetition of the same, to the
memory of the Pool family in Road church; in the Dissenters' cemetery of
this town may also be seen an elegant memorial cross, of Italian marble, on
a base of polished granite and blue pennant stone; and the "Nonconformist
memorial," in Rook Lane Chapel, Froome, to the memory of those who were
ejected from their livings by the "Act of Uniformity," and afterwards
ministered in that chapel, may be referred to as among the local evidences
as to ability in this department of art, of which our town has no need to
be ashamed."
For a time (abt 1875 until 1879) the "Portway Marble Works" ran a branch of the business at Hill Street, in Trowbridge. It ironic, that considering the Chapman family's devotion to Temperance, that the Chapman Marble Works in Trowbridge were later to become the offices of Usher's brewery.
Both Joseph and his son Ernest died in 1900. The business would appear to have been in a poor state and as Ernest's sons were not prepared, or equipped to run the business, and it was sold to Benjamin Jordan and Henry & Arthur Barnes. Benjamin Jordan continued to run a business in the yard until some time later when W.H.Morgan & Son ran a stone mason's business on the site.
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Page last revised 20th July 1999.
© S. B. Chapman