Mahomet Thomas Phillips

Mahomet Thomas Phillips (1 June 1876 – 7 June 1943) was an English-Congolese sculptor and stone carver. His work features in cathedrals and churches in England and beyond, including in a memorial to Edith Cavell in Peterborough Cathedral, and a reredos for the Cathedral of St John the Baptist in St John's, Newfoundland in Canada. He worked with a number of well known architects including Temple Moore, Sir Giles Gilbert Scott and Sir Charles Nicholson.

Biography Phillips was born on 1 June 1876 in Banana, Congo, and was the third child of an English trader named Richard Cobden Phillips and Nené Bassa also known as Menina Barros, a black woman from Cabinda. Both he and his brother were educated at a mission school in Mukinvika. Sometime in the 1880s Mahomet and his younger sister Nene travelled to England. In 1891 Mahomet was living in Salford with his father and his two cousins Paul and Ernest John Harrison.

From 1896 to 1909 Phillips studied and worked under George Walker Milburn at the York School of Science & Art. In 1905 he was awarded a second class in 'drawing from the Antique'. During this time he met his wife Mary Ann Morley; they went on to have three children - Nene (1900), Lancelot Barros (1902) and Francisco Morley (1904). By 1916 the family were living in Peterborough, where he worked for the builder and stonemason J. Thompson & Sons. In 1916 he was conscripted into the British Army. He applied to a Military Service Tribunal, possibly because he was close to the upper age limit, and was given a short deferral; he was described in the Peterborough Express as a "sculptor in wood, stone and marble".

He eventually enlisted in the Royal Field Artillery, attaining the rank of corporal. In 1920 he worked with them on the Grantham War Memorial in St Wulfram's churchyard. He became head of sculpting at Bowman & Sons and is credited with works in the cathedrals of Bradford, Chelmsford, Southwark, Manchester and Peterborough. In 1926 Phillips designed and carved the new screen in St Martin's Church, Stamford.

In October 2022 the University of Lincoln unveiled an exhibition in the University Library dedicated to Phillips' life.

Gallery of works