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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 just as the building boom started in Bath, and from his quarries came the stone for building 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 had been elected as a common council man of the city, and in 1742 elected Mayor and was the Member of Parliament for Bath between 1757 and 1764.
Ralph Allen died at the age of seventy one and is buried in a pyramid-topped tomb in Claverton churchyard.
Alexander Pope somewhat patronisingly referred to him in a poem of 1738 as "low-born".
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, 17201761, *Davis, S. (1985) Ralph Allen: benefactor and postal reformer [Bath Postal Museum booklet]
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