Farley was a monumental mason who lived at Kensal Green and operated from premises opposite the entrance to Kensal Green Cemetery. His principal monument in the cemetery is that to Eleanor Mary Gibson (d. 1872), praised by Christopher Brooks as giving ‘striking proof of the high level of craftsmanship achieved by the commercial firms of Victorian monumental masons’. After his death, the business was carried on by his son, James Stephen Farley, and after the son’s death by T. Kemp; today it continues to trade at the same address under the name Jordan Farley Ltd. James Samuel Farley had been appointed chapel clerk and sexton of the cemetery in 1843 and is buried there.
Bibliography: T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Kensington and Chelsea with Westminster South-West, Watford, 2023, pp. 214–15; J.S. Curl (ed.), Kensal Green Cemetery, Chichester, West Sussex, 2001, pp. 112, 214, 238; Mapping Sculpture ; I. Roscoe et al, A Biographical Dictionary of Sculptors in Britain 1660–1851, New Haven and London, 2009.
Terry Cavanagh November 2022