Ralph Allen
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- For the Canadian journalist, see Ralph Allen (journalist).
- For the Haitian painter, see Ralph Allen (painter).
Ralph Allen (1693 - June 29, 1764) was baptised at St Columb Major, Cornwall on July 24 1693. As a teenager he worked at the Post Office. He moved to Bath in 1710 where he became a clerk in the Bath Post Office, and at the age of 19, in 1712, he became the Post Master of Bath.
He acquired the stone quarries at Combe Down and Bathampton Down Mines just as the building boom started in Bath, and from his quarries came the distinctive "Bath stone" used to build the Georgian city, making Allen a second fortune.
He had the Palladian mansion Prior Park built for himself (1742) on a hill overlooking the city, "To see all Bath, and for all Bath to see". He gave money and the stone for the building of the Mineral Water Hospital in 1738, and even built cottages for his masons working in his quarries.
In 1725 he was elected to the town council, and in 1742 was elected Mayor. He was the Member of Parliament for Bath between 1757 and 1764.
Alexander Pope somewhat patronisingly referred to him in a poem of 1738 as "low-born".
Ralph Allen died at the age of seventy-one and is buried in a pyramid-topped tomb in Claverton churchyard, on the outskirts of Bath.
His name is commemorated in Bath in Ralph Allen Drive and Ralph Allen School, one of the city's secondary schools.
[edit] Bibliography
- Boyce, B. (1967) The benevolent man: a life of Ralph Allen of Bath
- Peach, R.E.M. (1895) The life and times of Ralph Allen
- Hopkins, A.E. (ed.) (1960) Ralph Allen's own narrative, 1720–1761, *Davis, S. (1985) Ralph Allen: benefactor and postal reformer [Bath Postal Museum booklet]
