Charles and William Thompson, Thompson of Osnaburgh Street (1800-1840s)

The stone masons Thompson of Osnaburgh Street, Marylebone sign a variety of white-on-black panel monuments in churches in London and elsewhere, dating from the 1800s through to the 1840s.

Typical panel by Thompson of Osnaburgh Street.

Charles Thompson, and his son William Thompson, were statuaries and stonemasons who sign several white-on-black panel monuments in London and elsewhere. C. Thompson signs the tall Classical tablet to John Bebb, d.1830, in St Marylebone Parish Church, and rather similar panels are in Portsmouth Cathedral Church, to George Cuthbert, d.1826, by C & W Thompson, and not signed but in identical style, to John Shugar, d.1833. In Beaconsfield Church is the tall obelisk monument to Josias Du Pre, d.1780 – Gunnis, the monumental historian, suggests the date of this work to be c.1800, when his wife Rebecca died, and – and in Twickenham Church is the early panel to Thomas Terry, d.1816. None of these are that ambitious, but are nicely composed examples of the white-on-black type. We might mention too a modest completely white marble tablet to Matilda Lockwood, d.1832 in Lambourne Church, Essex.

The family firm produced works from 1800 through to the early 1840s, being in the New Road, Marylebone [i.e. Marylebone Rd or Euston Rd] in the 1820s, and Osnaburgh Street, just off the New Road, from the 1830s. There are earlier works signed by Thompson, for example the panel to Rebecca Grice, d.1781, in St Philip’s Cathedral, Birmingham (there is a later one by signed W. Thompson there too), but I would think these represent a different stonemason with the same surname.