Thomas Nicholls

Thomas Nicholls (c. 1825 – 24 March 1896) was born in Westminster and had a studio in Lambeth so he would certainly have known the South London Technical School of Art and one assumes have sent members of his team to it for training. He was also commissioned by John Loughborogh Pearson for figures on the Winchester Cathedral Great Screen among other work from the 1850s. Strikingly, for all of the above he worked primarily in stone, whereas his work at Two Temple Place is mostly in wood.

At Two Temple Place he was apparently the senior member of the decorative team and was responsible for the Three Musketeers figures on the Staircase, one of the artistic highlights of the building. They must have been one of his last works as they were only delivered upon his death in 1896 (although they appear sketched in a Pearson drawing of 1894). He also carved the six American literary characters and the four Shakespeare friezes above the Stairs Gallery. He is sometimes credited with the very fine carving in the Library.

Two Temple Place is still looking for more archive material on Nicholls. He is so poorly remembered that even when Country Life wanted to complement him as a “craftsman, gone and forgotten, who quite obviously had a rare gift for modelling and a keen perception of grace in figure carving”, they got his name wrong…