Benjamin Mountfort - Early Life

Early Life

Mountfort was born in Birmingham, an industrial town in the Midlands of England, the son of perfume manufacturer and jeweller Thomas Mountfort and his wife Susanna (née Woolfield). As a young adult he moved to London, where he was an early pupil of George Gilbert Scott (from 1841–46). He also studied architecture under the Anglo-Catholic architect Richard Cromwell Carpenter, whose medieval Gothic style of design was to have a lifelong influence on Mountfort. After completion of his training in 1848, Mountfort practised architecture in London. He married Emily Elizabeth Newman on 20 August 1850, and 18 days later the couple emigrated to New Zealand. They were some of the first settlers to the province of Canterbury, arriving on one of the famed First Four Ships, the Charlotte-Jane on 16 December 1850. These first settlers, known as "The Pilgrims", have their names engraved on marble plaques in Cathedral Square, Christchurch, in front of the cathedral that Mountfort helped to design.