Firm of sculptors based at Lambeth, south London, specialising in architectural and ecclesiastical sculpture, working mostly to designs by the architects to whom they were contracted. The firm was begun by Thomas Nicholls (c.1825–1896) and carried on by his sons, Thomas O. Nicholls (c.1863–?) and Edward W. Nicholls (c.1867–?); it was operating as Messrs T. & E. Nicholls by 1901 at the latest, but by 1931 had reverted to Thomas Nicholls, the last reference in the trade directories appearing in 1939. The senior Thomas studied at the Royal Academy School of Architecture (Pearson, p. 10) and both he and his younger son, Edward, made isolated appearances at the annual Royal Academy exhibitions. Thomas showed two pieces in 1864: Autumn, commissioned by the architect Henry Woodyer (1816–1896), and The Good Shepherd, a model for a bronze intended for the crypt of St Augustine’s College, Canterbury (which had been designed by Woodyer’s master, William Butterfield). Edward also showed two pieces, both of them statuettes, Labour in 1885 and A Medieval Minstrel in 1889. Some of the firm’s earliest known contracts seem to have been in Chichester: the decorative exterior stonework – including some very fine headstops – for the (now former) churches of St Peter the Great (1852) and St Olave (1855), and the main entrance and chapel, etc, for Chichester cemetery (1858). Nicholls’s reputation for producing high quality work spread, with two architects in particular – the above-mentioned Woodyer and William Burges (1827–1881) – entrusting him with the majority of their sculpture contracts. For Woodyer, Nicholls’s executant work includes a reredos and pulpit for Christ Church, Reading (1861–62, 1874–75); the Monument to Dr Edward Hawtrey (1863), Eton College Chapel; all the carvings in Woodyer’s new chancel for St Martin’s, Dorking (1866–67); a reredos (1876) and sculpture entitled Jacob’s Dream (1877) for St Stephen, Clewer, Windsor; two reredoses and a Calvary for Woodyer’s chapel for the Convent of St John the Baptist, Clewer (1878–81); and a reredos (1881) for Woodyer’s chapel for Cranleigh School, Surrey. For Burges, a pair of fireplaces with reliefs of Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained (1861) for Gayhurst House, Buckinghamshire; a stone tympanum (south door) of Christ in Majesty and a Monument to Charles Lefroy and his wife for All Saints, Fleet, Hampshire (1860–62); all the sculpture for St Fin Barre’s Cathedral, Cork (1865–76); a reredos (model shown under Nicholls’s name at the International Exhibition of 1862) for Waltham Abbey; and extensive works in Cardiff Castle (1868–81) and Castell Coch (1872 onwards), Glamorgan. The usual working procedure would begin in the Lambeth workshop with Nicholls and his men creating full-size plaster models from the architect’s drawings – sometimes rough, sometimes detailed – with the finished models then transferred to their respective locations as guides for in situ carving. In the case of Cork, the carving was carried out by a local firm led by a stonemason named MacLeod, but for the work at Cardiff, Nicholls sent his own carvers, including Nathaniel Hitch, Charles Bursill and Henry Gunthorp. (At the end of 1881, a young William Goscombe John left his home in Cardiff to begin a five-year stint with Nicholls as a pupil-assistant.) Other architects who used Nicholls’s firm include J.L. Pearson (1817–1897) and John Oldrid Scott (1841–1913). For Pearson the firm carved the reredos (1870/1877) and choir screen (1890) for St Augustine, Kilburn, London; the south aisle font, St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle (1887); and newel post figures and a frieze of Shakespearian scenes for the staircase hall of Two Temple Place, London (1893–95); for Scott, the Monument to Canon Selwyn (1879), Ely Cathedral. Little is known of the firm’s activities following Thomas senior’s death. Two major commissions for the firm of T. & E. Nicholls, however, were a coat-of-arms and a tympanum relief of a naval battle for Lanchester, Stewart & Rickards’ Deptford Town Hall (1902–07) and a set of new figures (1905) for the sixteenth-century reredos at Southwark Cathedral.
Bibliography: Art Journal, 1 May 1862, p. 128; B. Bryant, Two Temple Place, London, 2013, pp. 44–49; T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of South London, Liverpool, 2007, pp. xiii, 141, 142, 144, 146, 147, 452–53; Mapping Sculpture: ‘Thomas Nicholls’; Mapping Sculpture: ‘Edward W. Nicholls’; National Museum of Wales: Art Collections Online – Thomas Nicholls; F. Pearson, Goscombe John at the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, 1979, pp. 10, 77–78; B. Read, Victorian Sculpture, New Haven and London, 1982, pp. 263–65; Victorian Web: ‘Thomas Nicholls’.
References from ‘The Buildings of England’ volumes of the Pevsner Architectural Guides (Yale University Press, New Haven and London) include: N. Antram and N. Pevsner, Sussex: East, 2013, pp. 162, 163; B. Bailey et al, Northamptonshire, 2013, p. 441; J. Bettley and N. Pevsner, Essex, (2007), 2010, pp. 466, 809; S. Bradley and N. Pevsner, Cambridgeshire, (2014), 2015, pp. 514, 591; S. Bradley and N. Pevsner, London 6: Westminster, 2003, p. 381; S. Bradley et al, Oxfordshire: Oxford and the South-East, 2023, pp. 321, 646; A. Brooks and N. Pevsner, Herefordshire, (2012), 2017, p. 176; A. Brooks and J. Sherwood, Oxfordshire: North and West, p. 549; M. Bullen et al, Hampshire: Winchester and the North, 2010, pp. 76, 79, 121, 286, 415, 601; B. Cherry and N. Pevsner, Devon, 2004, p. 527; B. Cherry and N. Pevsner, London 2: South, 1983, p. 571; B. Cherry and N. Pevsner, London 3: North West, 1991, pp. 57, 674; B. Cherry et al, London 5: East, 2005, p. 250; C. O’Brien, Surrey, 2022, pp. 230, 241, 373, 437, 552; J. Orbach et al, Wiltshire, 2021, pp. 74, 558; N. Pevsner and E. Williamson, Buckinghamshire, 2003, pp. 307, 337; G. Tyack et al, Berkshire, 2010, pp. 67, 96, 97, 316, 445, 492, 667, 699, 700, 702, 721; D. Verey and A. Brooks, Gloucestershire 1: The Cotswolds, 2002, pp. 160, 310–11; D. Verey and A. Brooks, Gloucestershire 2: The Vale and the Forest of Dean, (2002), 2009, pp. 595, 595n; E. Williamson et al, Sussex: West, 2019, pp. 235, 236.
Terry Cavanagh, August 2024
