Stone and wood carver, born in Wellington, Herefordshire, a son of Charles Ovens, a gardener. Nothing is known of Ovens’s training but by 1892 he is listed as a monumental mason working from the first of several addresses in Norwich, his base for most of his working life. By the date of the 1911 census, he was married, with a 19-year-old daughter and a 17-year-old son, Thomas Edward Ovens, who was also a carver and mason. Ovens’s work ranged from carved tombstones, such as that to Henry Hook (d. 1892) in Earlham Road Cemetery, Norwich, to the lavishly carved façade of the Roman Catholic Church of St Edmund (architect, Bernard Smith, 1888–1901) in Bungay, Suffolk. Ovens was also chief mason to the RC Cathedral of St John the Baptist, Norwich (architects, George Gilbert Scott junior and John Oldrid Scott, 1882–1910), one of the chief reasons for the building’s Grade I listing being its ‘high quality masonry’. By the date of the 1921 census he was living in Ipswich, aged 71, but still describing himself as in employment (as a ‘stone carver’); he died in late 1928, aged 78.
Ancestry website: (i) England and Wales, Civil Registration Birth index … for James Ovens, 1850; (ii) 1851 England Census for James Ovens … Worcester St Clement; (iii) 1861 England Census … Worcester St Clement; (iii) 1911 England Census … Norwich; (iv) 1921 England Census … Ipswich; (v) England and Wales, Civil Registration Death Index … for James Ovens. 1928. Q4; (vi) City and County Directories … for James Ovens … Norfolk. Kelly’s Directory, 1892, 1912, 1916.
Bibliography: J. Bettley and N. Pevsner, Suffolk: East (The Buildings of England), New Haven and London, 2015, p. 151, pl. 82; R. Cocke, Public Sculpture of Norfolk and Suffolk, Liverpool, 2013, pp. 195–96; Historic England official list entry: Roman Catholic Cathedral of St John the Baptist, Norwich.
Terry Cavanagh, May 2025