John Thomas Groves was an architect, surveyor and master tyler and bricklayer, active in the late-18th and early-19th centuries. He was born around 1760, the son of John Grove (or Groves), a London master bricklayer, with whom he was first apprenticed. He later trained as an architect.
Groves' works were exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1778 and 1780 and also in Italy, to where he later travelled and from where he was elected a member of the Florentine Academy in absentia in 1794. For much of his early career Groves worked as an architect and a surveyor in London. In addition to work in Westminster, Whitehall and at St. James's, he also designed monuments, country houses and repaired and redesigned several churches in other parts of England.
His perhaps best known work, however, is in County Galway, Ireland where he designed in 1811 a pierced obelisk for the 2nd Earl of Clancarty at Garbally Park.
Groves was made Master of the Tylers' and Bricklayers' Company in 1810. He died at his home in Scotland Yard, London, on 24 August 1811.
Bibliography
Colvin, Howard, A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600-1840, 3rd edition (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995), pp. 433-434.