THORPE [or Thorp], JOHN (fl. 1570–1618), English architect. Little is known of his life, and his work is dubiously inferred, rather than accurately known, from a folio of drawings in the Soane Museum, to which Horace Walpole called attention, in 1780, in his Anecdotes of Painting; but how far these were his own is uncertain. He was engaged on a number of important English houses of his time, and several, such as Longleat, have been attributed to him on grounds which cannot be sustained. He was probably the designer of Kirby Hall, Northamptonshire; the original Longford Castle, Wiltshire; and the original Holland House, Kensington; and he is said to have been engaged on Rushton Hall, Northamptonshire, and Audley End, Essex (with Bernard Janssens).
See J. A. Gotch, Architecture of the Renaissance in England (1891–1894).