Little is known of his life, and his work is dubiously inferred, rather than accurately known, from a folio of drawings in the Sir John Soane's Museum, to which Horace Walpole called attention, in 1780, in his Anecdotes of Painting; but how far these were his own is uncertain.
[1] 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,[1] because they were built before he was born.
[1] Thorpe's major contribution to world architecture is the humble and now-ubiquitous corridor, included in a 1597 plan of a "Great House" in Chelsea, London, allowing independent access to rooms.
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.
[5] For his work in 1606 surveying Ampthill and Holdenby House (intended as a residence for Charles, Duke of York), Thorpe was paid £70.