page_title: Thomas Rickman
section_title: Rickman's architectural practice
hierarchical_section_title: Thomas Rickman / Rickman's architectural practice
caption_attribution_description: The Church Of St Peter ad Vincula. Hampton Lucy. Listed Grade I [1]
context_page_description: Thomas Rickman was an English architect and architectural antiquary who was a major figure in the Gothic Revival. He is particularly remembered for his Attempt to Discriminate the Styles of English Architecture, which established the basic chronological classification and terminology that are still in widespread use for the different styles of English medieval ecclesiastical architecture.
context_section_description: As an architect, Rickman was self-taught. When in the Church Building Act of 1818 a large grant of money was set by the government to build new "Waterloo churches", Rickman sent in a design of his own which was successful in an open competition; thus he was fairly launched upon the profession of an architect, for which his natural gifts strongly fitted him. Rickman then moved to Birmingham where he designed the St George's Church (demolished in 1960) for the city. The design also consisted of churchyard gates, completed in 1822, which remain today. By 1830 Rickman had become one of the most successful architects of his time. He built churches at Hampton Lucy, Ombersley, and Stretton-on-Dunsmore, St George's at Birmingham, St Philip's, St Mary the Virgin and St Matthew's in Bristol, two in Carlisle, St Peter's and St Paul's at Preston, St David's in Glasgow, Grey Friars at Coventry, St Michael's Church, Aigburth and many others. He also designed New Court of St John's College, Cambridge, a palace for the bishop of Carlisle, and several large country houses.
  Rickman attracted a large share of the Church Building Commission's patronage in the new churches built in the West Midlands pursuant to the Church Building Act of 1818. Rickman's transitional Gothic style, that later designers looked down on as "Church Commissioners' Gothic", did not stand the more rigorous scrutiny of better-informed historicists in the age of photography. The Encyclopædia Britannica 1911 said of his churches "These are all in the Gothic style, but show more knowledge of the outward form of the medieval style than any real acquaintance with its spirit, and are little better than dull copies of old work, disfigured by much poverty of detail." A later, more generous critic, Sir Howard Colvin, has remarked:
  "He was no ecclesiologist. If the detailing of his buildings was unusually scholarly, the planning remained Georgian, and the total effect of most of his churches is thin and brittle, if by no means unattractive"
  Rickman nevertheless played an important part in the revival of taste for medievalism, perhaps second only to Pugin.
  Henry Hutchinson partnered with Rickman in December 1821 and formed a practice called Rickman and Hutchinson. Rickman remained in this practice until Hutchinson's death in 1831.
caption: St Peter ad Vincula, Hampton Lucy is a Grade I listed building.[3]
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