Career
A merchant, Champneys began the building of Hall Place, Bexley, in about 1537. A contemporary chronicler, John Stow, noted that he was blind in later life: a divine judgment for having added "a high tower of brick" to his house in Mincing Lane, "the first that I ever heard of in any private man"s house, to overlook his neighbours in this city."
He was buried on 8 October 1556 at Street Mary the Virgin, Bexley.