The book tells the unusual story of this very charismatic Edwardian baroque architect whose buildings were described by Sir John Summerson as ‘fizzing like champagne’.
Rickards won the competition to design Cardiff City Hall in 1897, in partnership with Henry Vaughan Lanchester and James Stewart, when he was 25. His few completed buildings include Deptford Town Hall and Methodist Central Hall in Westminster, as well as the lesser known but no less interesting School of Art in Hull, today the Northern Academy of Performing Arts. All of these buildings are in their original condition and testify to Rickards’ astonishing ability as a designer of rich plastic forms, in collaboration with leading practitioners of the New Sculpture such as H.C. Fehr and Henry Poole.
The book is illustrated throughout with new photography by Robin Forster, who collaborated with Dr Brittain-Catlin on his previous book The Edwardians and the Houses (2020), as well as with Rickards’ own drawings. The book is the third in a series on Victorian architects edited by our former Professor of Architecture Andrew Saint and are an important source of information in Historic England’s listing decisions.