Thomas Rickman

Rickman was born on 8 June 1776 at Maidenhead, Berkshire, into a large Quaker family. He avoided the medical career envisaged for him by his father, a grocer and druggist, and instead went into business for himself. He married his first cousin Lucy Rickman in 1804, a marriage that estranged him from the Quakers.

The failure of his business dealings in London and the death of his first wife left Rickman despondent: the long walks into the countryside that he took for his state of mind were the beginning of his first, antiquarian interest in church architecture. All his spare time was spent in sketching and making careful measured drawings, and classifying medieval architecture, at first through its window tracery, into the sequence that he labelled "Norman" "Early English", "Decorated English" and "Perpendicular English", names that have remained in use, which he was already employing in his diaries in 1811; he gained a knowledge of architecture which was very remarkable at a time when little taste existed for the beauties of the Gothic styles. In 1811 alone he is said to have studied three thousand ecclesiastical buildings. In September that year he gave the first of a series of lectures on medieval architecture at the small Philosophical Society of Liverpool, which he had joined. In around 1812 he wrote an essay on Chester Cathedral, which was published posthumously in 1864. The first publication to appear during his lifetime was an article on Gothic architecture for Smith's Panorama of Arts and Sciences (Liverpool). This was separately published in 1817 as An Attempt to Discriminate the Styles of English Architecture from the Conquest to the Reformation, the first systematic treatise on Gothic architecture and a milestone in the Gothic Revival. It ran through many editions and provided the basis of Rickman's public reputation. He was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1829.

Rickman was married three times: first to his cousin, Lucy Rickman of Lewes; secondly to Christiana Hornor; and thirdly to Elizabeth Miller of Edinburgh, by whom he had a son, the architect Thomas Miller Rickman (1827–1912), and a daughter. He was a Quaker for most of his life. Though officially estranged after his first marriage, he continued to attend meetings, and was re-admitted prior to his second marriage. Late in his life, he became a member of the Catholic Apostolic (Irvingian) Church

• Illustration — Tomb of Thomas Rickman in the former churchyard of St George in the Fields, Hockley Rickman died at Birmingham on 4 January 1841. He was buried in the churchyard of the church he had designed: St George's Church. His tomb, designed by R. C. Hussey and completed in 1845, still stands, although the church does not.

• St George's Church, Everton 1813 • St Michael's Church, Aigburth 1813 • Gwrych Castle, Abergele 1819–20 • Old Town Hall, Clitheroe 1820 • Church of St Thomas, Birmingham (war damaged 1940, now St. Thomas' Peace Garden) 1826–1829 • Bank for Birmingham Banking Company (later Midland Bank), Temple Row, Birmingham 1830. • Holy Trinity Church, Lawrence Hill 1832 • Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church, Redditch 1834, his only Catholic church. • Keeper's Lodge, Audley End, Essex 1835 • St Stephen's Church, Sneinton 1837 • Bishop Ryder Church, Birmingham 1838 • Rose Castle (alterations), Cumbria