Richard Ingleman is first noted as a Surveyor to the fabric of Southwell Minster, a position he held from 1801 to 1808.

[3] He entered unsuccessfully the competition in 1812 for the design of the Milbank Penitentiary which was to be built on the present site of the Tate Gallery.

He was successful in two other large prison projects: the rebuilding of Devizes New Bridewell[4] and the Fisherton Anger House of Correction in Salisbury.

It was not until 1817 that he started on the Fisherton Anger House of Correction, but by this time he had been approached to design the Warneford Mental Hospital at Oxford, which was built between 1821 and 1826.

Howard Colvin notes that Ingleman's asylums were classical buildings of no special distinction, but the unexecuted plans he submitted for the re-building of Shelton Church, Nottinghamshire, were an essay in Early English style which were quite creditable for the time.