Richard Cromwell Carpenter

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The parish church at Earl Shilton designed by Richard Cromwell Carpenter. Retaining the tower of the former church, the new building was in a medieval Gothic style.

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

The son of Richard and Sophia Carpenter, he was born into a moderately affluent family living in Russell Square, London.

Richard Cromwell Carpenter was a member of the Cambridge Movement — a group of Tractarians devoted to the return of medieval forms of liturgy and church building within the Church of England. Thus, Carpenter championed the gradual drift away from the more classical Palladian-influenced architecture of the 18th century and early 19th century towards the Gothic style which was to typify the Victorian period.

Carpenter founded the family firm "Carpenter and Slater" with his architectural partner William Slater. The company specialised in church design and restoration, and was responsible for many of the churches built and restored during the Victorian era. The church of St. Simon & St. Jude at Earl Shilton was designed by Carpenter between 1854–1856, as was St. Paul's Church at Brighton.

Among his most notable work was Lancing College in Sussex (1854): so popular was Carpenter's work at the time that the educationalist and founder of Lancing College Nathaniel Woodard described Lancing's great chapel as an "immemorial creed in stone", and "has been considered by competent judges to be the finest example of a Gothic Church since the Middle Ages, and in its gracefulness of detail and majesty of proportion is an enduring monument to the genius of Richard Carpenter, its architect". Carpenter died shortly after submitting grandiose plans for the new Inverness Cathedral; as a consequence his plan was not executed.

Today, perhaps, Carpenter's chief claim to fame is having been the teacher and mentor of the eminent New Zealand architect Benjamin Mountfort, who was one of his pupils. Heavily influenced by Carpenter's form of Gothic revival, Mountfort took many of Carpenter's ideals to New Zealand where he became the country's leading church architect, with over forty churches and other buildings in the Gothic style attributed to him. Many of Mountford's New Zealand designs, especially those in the province of Canterbury, were openly borrowed from Carpenter.

Richard Cromwell Carpenter was the father of the ecclesiastical Gothic architect Richard Herbert Carpenter.