page_title: Ralph Allen
section_title: Quarrying of Bath stone
hierarchical_section_title: Ralph Allen / Quarrying of Bath stone
caption_attribution_description: Prior Park House, Bath, Somerset, United Kingdom - home of Ralph Allen
context_page_description: Ralph Allen was an entrepreneur and philanthropist, and was notable for his reforms to the British postal system.
  Allen was born in Cornwall but moved to Bath to work in the post office becoming the postmaster at the age of 19. He made the system more efficient and took over contracts for the mail system to cover England to the borders of Scotland and into South Wales. He also bought the initial local stone mines from his postal profits and had Prior Park built as his house to show off the versatility of the local Bath stone, using the old post office as his town house. With the architect John Wood, the Elder the stone he mined was used in the building work for the development of the Georgian city. However, the mines did not consistently make a profit and Allen subsidised them from his postal profits.
  After his death, he was buried in a pyramid-topped tomb in Claverton churchyard. He is commemorated in the names of streets and schools in the city of Bath and was the model for Squire Allworthy in the novel Tom Jones by Henry Fielding.
context_section_description: With the arrival of John Wood in Bath, Allen used the wealth gained from his postal reforms to acquire the stone quarries at Combe Down and Bathampton Down Mines. Hitherto, the quarry masons had always hewn stone roughly providing blocks of varying size. The resulting uneven surface is known as "rubble" and buildings of this type – built during the Stuart period – are visible throughout the older parts of Bath.
  The distinctive honey-coloured Bath stone, used to build the Georgian city, made Allen a second fortune. The building in Lilliput Alley, Bath (now North Parade Passage), which he used as a post office, became his Town House and in 1727 he refronted the southern rubble wall, extended the house to the north and added a whole new storey. John Wood the Elder refers to this in his "Essay towards the future of Bath". Allen was extremely astute at marketing the qualities of Bath Stone and erected an elaborately ornate building a few feet to the north of his house to demonstrate its qualities. The extension (as Wood refers to it) has become known as "Ralph Allen's Town House"  though whether it was designed by Wood is unproven and many local historians consider it unlikely. Allen continued to live there until 1745, when he moved to Prior Park, and the townhouse became his offices.
  Allen had the Palladian mansion Prior Park built for himself (1742) on a hill overlooking the city, "To see all Bath, and for all Bath to see". He gave money and the stone for the building of the Mineral Water Hospital in 1738.
  Allen had a summer home built in the English coastal town of Weymouth in Dorset, overlooking the harbour at number 2 Trinity street, opposite the Customs house. There is a plaque on the house to commemorate Allen. His Bath stone was used to build the Georgian style buildings in Weymouth.
caption: Prior Park House, home of Ralph Allen
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