Nathaniel Hitch

Nathaniel Hitch (1845–1938) was a successful South London owner of a stonemason and sculpture practice and worked with John Loughborough Pearson regularly from the 1850s.

Hitch’s work includes the benches in the Great Hall with their wonderful mermaids and lions and the Ivanhoe figures. He also produced the portraits on the Great Hall frieze so one assumes, given how particular that selection is, that he would have taken considerable personal direction from Astor. In Pearson’s ecclesiastical work he was given great leeway to work directly with clients.