Clapton Crabb Rolfe

Clapton Crabb Rolfe (5 March 1845 – 18 December 1907) was an English Gothic Revival architect whose practice was based in Oxford.

They had one son, Benedict Hugh Rolfe (born 1874)[4] who trained as an architect and assisted his father on some of his later works, before settling in London as a consulting engineer.

In his reconstruction of part of the nave of Nuneaton Abbey and his restoration of All Saints parish church, Thorpe Malsor, the carving was undertaken by Harry Hems (1842–1916),[4] a craftsman who originated from Yorkshire[7] but from 1866 worked in Exeter.

[4] John Oldrid Scott was the successful applicant, but Rolfe was later appointed Oxford Diocesan Surveyor.

[4] In 1871 he wrote in The Builder: Those professional men nowadays who despise and ridicule that pure symbolic spirit which actuated our forefathers in their church-work, and probably substitute for it that £sd money-grubbing spirit of the age, are alike unfit and unworthy of being engaged on any modern church-work whatever.

[9]Rolfe wrote a number of publications on aspects of church architecture and furnishing, but as he got older the style and content of his writing became increasingly obscure.