Details of Sculptor

Surname

Wilson

Alternative Surname

First Name

Sir William

Initial of Surname

W

Year of Birth/Baptism

1641

Flourished

Year of Death

1710

Biographical Details

The Midlands architect and carver was a native of Leicester and can probably be identified with William, baptised in St Nicholas, Leicester on 16 May 1641, the son of William Wilson, a baker. He appears to have served his apprenticeship with a statuary mason and is said to have carved the statue of King Charles II which was set up on the west front of Lichfield Cathedral shortly before 1699, when Bishop Hacket’s restoration was completed. It was taken down in 1877 and is now in the north west tower. Between 1670 and 1673 he was working as a carver at Sudbury Hall, Derbys, then being rebuilt by George Vernon (8, 9). In or about 1671 he provided several Wilbraham monuments at Weston for Lady Elizabeth Wilbraham, who recorded the agreement in her copy of Palladio’s First Book of Architecture, which is preserved in the library at Weston Park (1).
Wilson later carved an equestrian statue of the Duke of Newcastle, for the north-east front of Nottingham Castle (4). In 1831 the castle was sacked and set alight during riots which broke out after the Reform Bill was rejected by the House of Lords. Apparently ‘the mob ... carried off the figure as a glorious trophy of the destructive work on which they had been engaged’ (Builder, 8 Sept 1900, 210) but some fragments of the statue remain in situ. Charles Deering, the Nottingham historian, notes that soon after the completion of this work Wilson was ‘for a time spoiled for a statuary because a Leicestershire widow lady, the Lady Pudsey, who was possessed of a very large jointure, falling deeply in love with him, got him knighted and married him, but he living up to the extent of his apron-string estate, and his lady dying before him, Sir William returned to his former occupation, and the publick recovered the loss of an eminent artist’ (Deering 1751 in Wren Soc XI, 108). The lady was in fact Mrs Jane Pudsey, the widow of Henry Pudsey, of Langley, near Sutton Coldfield, Warks, who had died in 1677. It has been plausibly suggested that Wilson executed the monument to Mr Pudsey, which features busts of him and his wife within a draped recess, for the church at Sutton Coldfield (Edwards 1950, 45, repr). The date of Wilson’s marriage has not been established but he was knighted at Whitehall on 8 March 1681/2 and two days later was admitted to the fellowship of the freemasons at Masons’ Hall, London.
As an architect and surveyor Wilson supervised the erection of the Free School, at Appleby, Leics for Sir John Moore, 1693-97. The original plans were drawn up by Wren but Wilson made drastic alterations to them, producing a building which, while it conformed to Wren’s general plan, had, with its mullioned and transomed windows, the appearance of a Jacobean structure of the first half of the 17th century. In the end Moore found that the school cost more than he had anticipated and Wilson had some difficulty in obtaining payment for his work as surveyor and for the founder’s statue which he had executed and set up in a pedimented niche in what was then the main schoolroom (6). Wilson provided designs for rebuilding St Mary, Warwick, after the fire of 1694 and received payments for carving there in 1700 and 1706 (10, 12). In 1707 he was paid a further £10 ‘for the Marble Monuments on which two brass figures are fixt in the Church of St Maryes in Warwick over againt the South Isle in the sd. Church’ (Warwick Fire Commissions, Warks RO CR 1618/WA4 /270). This must refer to the slab on which the medieval brasses of Thomas Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick (†1401) and his wife and his wife were placed after the fire of 1694 (inf. GMD Booth). In 1697 he was employed by Thomas Coke in measuring the foundations of Melbourne Hall, Derbys and a ‘gauche elevation of baroque character’ mentioned in the Melbourne archives, inscribed ‘alteration for Melbourne by Sir Wm. Wilson’ was probably made at that time (Colvin 1995, 1064). He also designed the ‘agreeable Baroque chapel’ at Hall Green, Yardley, near Birmingham, which was consecrated in 1704 and several houses in Warwickshire are attributed to him (ibid).
Lady Wilson died in 1697 and was buried in Sutton Coldfield. Her husband died there at the age of 69 on 3 June 1710, and is commemorated by a tablet in the church. In his will he provided for a benefaction to the poor of St Nicholas parish, Leicester. It was later reported that Wilson’s lowly birth so offended his wife’s relations that they refused to contemplate his being buried in the vault with her. Wilson was aware of this and, when a friend commiserated with him, facetiously replied that he was not worried, for he would be buried outside the church, directly opposite the Pudsey vault. Then, he said, ‘there will be only a single stone wall betwixt us, and as I am stonemason there will be no kind of labour or difficulty in cutting my road through the wall to my old bedfellow’ (Sutton Coldfield 1762, in Gunnis 1968, 434).
Literary References: Churches of Warwick 1847, 1, 34; Builder, 8 Sept 1900, 210; Wren Soc, XI (1934), 108-113; Edwards 1950, 44-5; Brandon-Jones 1954, 177-8; Beard 1954, 780; Gunnis 1968, 433-4; Whitehead 1992, 79-81; Colvin 1995, 1063-64
Archival References: GPC