(b ?Sheffield, 1785; d Port of Spain, Trinidad, Nov 1846). English sculptor, designer and architect. In 1810 he exhibited at the first Liverpool Academy Exhibition and showed models and drawings there in 1811, 1812 and 1814. These included designs for the restoration of the screen in Sefton church, Merseyside, and for a chimney-piece for Speke Hall, Liverpool, and two drawings of Joseph Ridgway’s house at Ridgmont, Horwich, Lancs. Bridgens designed furniture and furnishings in Gothic and Elizabethan styles for GEORGE BULLOCK. In 1814 he moved to London with Bullock, using his address at 4 Tenterden Street, Hanover Square, and prepared designs for Sir Godfrey Vassal Webster (1789–1836) for improvements to Battle Abbey, E. Sussex, and similarly for Sir Walter Scott’s home, Abbotsford House, at Melrose on the Borders. Two chair designs for Battle Abbey were published in Rudolph Ackermann’s Repository of Arts in September 1817, and Bridgens was also involved in the design of chairs supplied to Abbotsford House in 1818. Following Bullock’s death in 1818 Bridgens moved to 10 Tenterden Street and later attempted to set up an architectural practice in Birmingham. From 1819 he was employed by James Watt (1769–1848) to produce designs for the restoration and furnishing of Aston Hall in Birmingham. Examples of designs for Jacobean-style furniture and furnishings are dated 1819–24 and 1834–7. While in Birmingham Bridgens also published a folio volume of engravings of Sefton church. By 1825 he had closed the Birmingham practice, as it had attracted insufficient clients, and moved to Trinidad, where his wife had inherited a sugar plantation. He was in England soon after April 1831 and published 58 plates dated September 1825 to October 1826 under the title Furniture with Candelabra and Interior Decoration Applicable to the Embellishment of Modern and Old English Mansions (London, 1833; rev. 1838). The important designs in this publication are those in the Elizabethan and Jacobean styles, and the book greatly influenced early Victorian design and helped to promote the styles that were then becoming fashionable.

• Bridgens, Richard (Hicks)
  • Bullock, George
  • England, §VI, 6: Furniture, 1831–1900