Nicholson, Sir Charles Archibald, Bt.

Nicholson, Sir Charles Archibald, Bt. (1867–1949). English architect. He was articled to Sedding, after whose death he continued to practise with Henry Wilson. In 1893 he set up on his own and in 1895 was joined by the Australian Hubert Christian Corlette (1869–1956), who had trained with Belcher. Their first church was St Alban, Westcliffe-on-Sea, Essex (1895–1908—a refined design in a Free Gothic style, constructed of flint and rubble with red-brick dressings, and with pretty furnishings inside, including a Rood-screen and fine reredos), and they published important papers on the furnishing of ecclesiastical buildings (1907–12). They designed one of the first extensive reinforced-concrete complexes, Government Buildings and House, Kingston, Jamaica (1910), an extraordinary work with bays defined by massive buttresses. Their finest church is arguably St Matthew's, Chelston, Torquay, Devon (1895–1904), where Arts-and-Crafts influences merged with a freely treated Gothic Revival. Nicholson contributed to the design of St Anne's Cathedral, Belfast, where he was consultant architect from 1924 to 1948.

Bibliography

A. S. Gray (1985);
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (1959);
Pe: BoE, Devon (1989) and Essex;