Author: Repton, Humphry
Biography:
REPTON, Humphry (1752-1818: ODNB)
Humphry Repton was born at Bury St Edmunds on 2 May 1752, the son of John Repton (d 1775), a collector of excise, and his wife, Martha (d 1773), the daughter of John Fitch of Moor Hall, Suffolk. His mother’s ancestor Thomas Fitch was knighted by Henry V on the field of Agincourt. He spent seven years at grammar schools in Bury and Norwich. From age thirteen to sixteen he was schooled in the Netherlands, at Workum. With the intention of becoming a merchant, he was then apprenticed for seven years at Norfolk to a calico trader. Following their three years’ engagement, on 5 May 1773 at St Mary in the Marsh, Norwich, he married Mary Clarke. (The wedding was witnessed by his brother John and by his brother-in-law attorney John Adey, for whom John was clerking.) Several attempts at business failed. Guided by James Edward Smith and Lancelot Brown, he become a landscape gardener (a term he invented) catering to wealthy estate owners. He specialized not in the construction or maintenance of gardens but in landscape design and garden architecture. Between 1788, when he commenced his practice, and the time of his death, he is said to have advised as many as 200 clients. From 1783 he was resident in Hare Street, Romford, Essex. He died there on 24 March 1818. Attended at his funeral by his wife and five survivors among their sixteen children, he was buried on 1 Apr. at Aylsham, Norfolk. (ODNB 18 Nov. 2024; PROB 11/1609; J. C. Loudon, “Biographical Notice,” The Landscape Gardening and Landscape Architecture of the Late Humphry Repton [1840], 1-22) JC