John Thorpe (antiquarian, 1715–1792)

He was educated at Ludsdown, Kent, under Samuel Thornton, and matriculated at University College, Oxford, on 22 March 1732, graduating B.A.

After residing for many years at High-street House, Bexley, Kent, he moved in 1789, after the death of his first wife, to Richmond Green, Surrey, and then to Chippenham in Wiltshire, where he died on 2 August 1792; he was buried in the churchyard of the neighbouring village of Hardenhuish.

[1] In 1769 Thorpe published, with assistance from John Baynard of the Navy Office, his father's Registrum Roffense.

[1] His mention, in Custumale Roffense of a Roman mosaic pavement, discovered about 1750 in Lullingstone Park by workmen digging post holes, led archaeologists in 1949 to not only locate and uncover the pavement, but also to reveal the extensive Lullingstone Roman Villa to which it belonged.

[2] Thorpe contributed also "Illustrations of several Antiquities in Kent which have hitherto remained undescribed" to the first volume of Bibliotheca Topographica Britannica’ A letter from him to Andrew Coltée Ducarel, maintaining in opposition to Daines Barrington, that the cherry is indigenous to England, was published in Philosophical Transactions during 1771, p. 152).