Thomas Rickman

Thomas Rickman ( born June 8, 1776 in Maidenhead, Berkshire, † January 4, 1841 in Birmingham ) was an English architect.

Rickman helped to 1797 his father, a Quaker, in its business as a grocer and druggist. Until 1818, he worked in various professions. He devoted all his time to the making of sketches and carefully measured drawings. In this way he acquired at a time when there was little sense of the beauty of the architecture in the Gothic style, a very remarkable knowledge of this form of architecture. Alone in 1811, he is said to have studied 3,000 church buildings.

When the government approved 1818 high financial resources for the construction of new churches to Rickman successfully participated with its own design to a corresponding public competition. Because of this success, he was now working as an architect to pursue, for which he was well suited by its natural talents. Rickman moved to Birmingham and this was around the year 1830 one of the most successful English architect of his time. He built churches in Hampton Lucy, Ombersley, and Stretton -on- Dunsmore. Next come among many other other churches by him to St. George's in Birmingham, St. Phillip's and St. Matthew's in Bristol as well as two churches in Carlisle, St. Peter 's and St. Paul's in Preston, St. David's in Glasgow and Grey Friars in Coventry. Also the new courtyard of St John's College, Cambridge and the episcopal palace in Carlisle as well as many large country houses designed by him.

All these buildings were built in the Gothic style ( Gothic ). However, the execution shows a rather limited knowledge of the architect, which is limited to the outer shape of medieval style without any real familiarity would be visible to the mind and spirituality, which are the Gothic style to reason. From an artistic point of view they are therefore to be regarded as a rather clumsy copies of old works which are characterized in particular by their vagueness. Nevertheless Rickman played an important role in the onset of his lifetime with the advent of the Gothic Revival style revival of medieval taste that is second in England only through the work of Augustus Pugin. His book " Attempt to discriminate the Styles of Architecture in England " testifies of careful studies, and has been widely reprinted. One of his students was Leonhard Zeugheer.

Rickman died on 4 January 1841 in Birmingham. He was married three times. First with his cousin Lucy Rickman of Lewes, then with Christina Hornor and finally with Elizabeth Miller from Edinburgh, who bore him a son and a daughter.

  • Architect ( United Kingdom)
  • English
  • Born in 1776
  • Died in 1841
  • Man
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