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John Thorpe or Thorp (c.1565–1655?; fl.1570–1618) was an English architect.
He was engaged on a number of important English houses of his time, and several, such as Longleat, have been attributed to him on grounds which cannot be sustained, because they were built before he was born. In 1570 when he was five years old, he laid the foundation stone of Kirby Hall, Northamptonshire his father being the Master mason of the project.John Summerson, 'The Book of Architecture of John Thorpe in Sir John Soane's Museum', The 40th Volume of the Walpole Society (London, 1966), p. 2. He was probably the designer of Charlton House, in Charlton, London; the original Longford Castle, Wiltshire; Condover Hall and the original Holland House, Kensington; and he is said to have been engaged on Rushton Hall, Northamptonshire, and Audley End, Essex (with Bernard Janssens).
Thorpe's major contribution to world architecture is the humble and now-ubiquitous Hall, included in a 1597 plan of a "Great House" in Chelsea, London, allowing independent access to rooms.Andor Gomme & Alison Maguire, Design and Plan in the Country House: From Castle Donjons to Palladian Boxes (Yale, 2008), p. 126. Thorpe marked the corridor in the plan, thought to be for Beaufort House for Sir Robert Cecil, as "A long Entry through all". Previously, grand houses had a so-called enfilade arrangement of rooms in which each room led to the next via connecting internal doors. The enfilade remained popular in continental Europe long after the corridor was widely adopted in England. Thorpe's inspiration may have been the one-sided covered walkway common in monastic cloisters.Judith Flanders, The Making of Home (Atlantic Books, 2014), p. 75.
Thorpe joined the Office of Works as a clerk, then practised independently as a land surveyor. In August 1605 the Earl of Dorset wrote to "Mr Thorpe" to survey and make "plots" for the rebuilding of Ampthill for Anne of Denmark and Prince Henry. HMC Salisbury Hatfield, vol. 17 (London, 1938), pp. 349–50. For his work in 1606 surveying Ampthill and Holdenby House (intended as a residence for Charles, Duke of York), Thorpe was paid £70.Frederick Devon, Issues of the Exchequer (London, 1836), 37, 86.
From 1611 he was assistant to Robert Tresswell, Surveyor-General of Woods South of the Trent. He retired in the 1630s but seems to have lived to an advanced age, dying around 1655.
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