Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 18.djvu/394

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Ferrey
388
Ferrey

canons of which church he gave lands at Chartley and the advowson of Stow, near Chartley (Dugdale, Monasticon, vi. 472). By his second wife, Eleanor, said to have been daughter of Ralph, lord Basset (Vincent, p. 207), he left a son John, born in June 1271 at Cardiff, who succeeded to his grandmother Margaret's share of the Winchester estates (Cal. Genealogicum, pp. 464, 762), and, after joining Bohun and Bigod in the struggle for the charters, was summoned to parliament in 1299 and died in 1324. He was the ancestor of the Lords Ferrers of Chartley. A daughter of Robert Ferrers married as her second husband Davydd ab Gruffudd [q. v.]

[Annales Monastici, Rishanger's Chronicle, Chronicon de Melsa (all in Rolls Series); Liber de Antiquis Legibus, Rishanger de Bello (Camden Soc.); Continuation of Florence of Worcester (Engl. Hist. Soc.); Robert of Gloucester's Metrical Chronicle, ed. Hearne; Knighton in Twysden, Decem Scriptores; Rymer's Fœdera, vol. i.; Calendarium Rotulorum Patentium, Excerpta e Rotulis Finium, and Calendarium Genealogicum, ed. Record Commission; Dugdale's Baronage, i. 262–5; Doyle's Official Baronage, i. 549.]

T. F. T.

FERREY, BENJAMIN (1810–1880), architect, was born at Christchurch, Hampshire, on 1 April 1810. He was the youngest son of a gentleman of Huguenot extraction, whose family settled in England on the revocation of the edict of Nantes. He early evinced a taste for drawing and a love of sketching old buildings, and at the age of thirteen made very correct drawings of the interior of the fine old priory church of his native place. While at the grammar school of Wimborne in Dorsetshire, where he received his early education, he used to spend hours drawing in the ancient minster, and he eventually became, indeed, one of the best architectural draughtsmen of his day. At an early age he was placed by his father with the elder Pugin. He accompanied his master on many excursions for the purpose of measuring and drawing mediæval buildings in England and Normandy, while as an inmate of Pugin's house he benefited by a discipline somewhat rigorously enforced by Mrs. Pugin, and humorously described in the ‘Recollections’ of the elder and younger Pugins afterwards published by him. Many of the drawings published by the elder Pugin were executed by his pupils, and a large proportion of those in his ‘Ornamental Bargeboards’ and his ‘Gothic Ornaments’ bear the signature of Ferrey. After several years spent in this excellent school of practice Ferrey entered the office of Wilkins, who employed him upon the detail drawings of the National Gallery; and being thus fortunately brought under the influence of the classic school he was effectually weaned from a bigoted attachment to the Gothic revival, in which he had been an early worker. In 1834 he brought out, in conjunction with Brayley [q. v.], his ‘Antiquities of the Priory Church of Christchurch, Hants,’ and soon afterwards commenced business as an architect in Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury, on a site now occupied by the British Museum. His first important commission was the laying out of the estate of Sir George Gervis at Bournemouth. The oldest part of the present town on the east cliff, including the Bath Hotel, opened in 1838, and adjacent villas, was designed by and erected under the superintendence of Ferrey. Another of his earliest clients was the Rev. Thomas Thurlow, nephew of Lord-chancellor Thurlow, to whose old Tudor mansion of Baynard's Park in Surrey he made extensive additions. In 1836 he married his first wife, the daughter of Mr. Lucas of Stapleton Hall, Hornsey. In 1839 he carried out a portion of the County Hospital, Dorchester, and in 1841 he was appointed hon. diocesan architect of Bath and Wells, a post which he held till his death. In 1842 he superintended the restoration of the nave, transepts, and Lady Chapel of Wells Cathedral, and about that time obtained through influential friends considerable professional employment in the county of Dorset. His work at the bishop's palace and chapel at Wells is much admired. In 1843 he designed the costly church of St. James, Morpeth, a successful adaptation of the grander features of the Norman style. In 1845 he designed for the Baroness (then Miss) Burdett Coutts the church of St. Stephen, Rochester Row, Westminster, and the handsome schools and vicarage also erected by her about the same time in what was then a poor neighbourhood. During the next twenty years he was one of the best employed and best liked architects of his day. His professional skill and reputation gained him many clients whom his winning manners and the evenness of his temper enabled him to retain as friends. His practice probably lay most largely in ecclesiastical architecture, mainly Gothic. He was one of the consulting architects of the Incorporated Church Building Society. A very full list of his works will be found in the ‘Builder,’ cited below. During the latter years of his practice he was associated with his son, Edward Benjamin Ferrey, who succeeded him in business. His last work was the Duke of Connaught's mansion at Bagshot Park, commenced in 1877. In the same year he had a slight attack of