Sampson Kempthorne

Sampson Kempthorne (1809–1873) was an English architect who specialised in the design of workhouses, before his emigration to New Zealand.

His father was a friend of the Poor Law Commissioner Thomas Frankland Lewis, which may have helped him to get the commission to build workhouses.

He also designed some Gothic churches, including Holy Trinity (1834–35) (destroyed by bombing in 1940) and All Saints (1839), both in Rotherhithe,[2] and St James, in Upton Street, Gloucester, originally built as a chapel-of-ease to the nearby church of St Michael, of which his father was rector.

[4] He was engaged by Bishop George Selwyn to build some stone Gothic churches but his first two attempts, St Thomas's at Tamaki (1847) and St Stephen's at Judges Bay, Parnell, New Zealand (1848), proved structurally unsound and were soon demolished.

[5] His assistant for a short time in 1834–35 was George Gilbert Scott, who went on, in partnership with William Moffat, to begin his independent architectural career as a specialist in the design of workhouses.

Plan view of Kempthorne's cruciform design for a workhouse accommodating 300 paupers.
Kempthorne's plan for a workhouse for 300 paupers, from the Annual Report of the Poor Law Commissioners (1835).