Nabokov, Nicolas [Nikolay]

Nicholson.

English family of organ builders and music retailers. The source of their expertise is not known, but they were related to a family of printers, publishers, machine makers and mechanical innovators of which 18 members are known. Their ascendancy was fuelled by the contemporary growth in church building and restoration, and their surviving work shows great skill and fine choice of materials. Three older members of the family, (1) Richard (i), (2) John (i) and Thomas, almost certainly shared the same (possibly thrice-married) father, Joshua, a joiner and builder.

(1) Richard Nicholson

(2) John Nicholson (i)

(3) John Nicholson (ii)

JAMES BERROW

Nicholson

(1) Richard Nicholson

(b Warley, nr Halifax, W. Yorks., 2 Jan 1788; d Walsall, Staffs., 5 March 1862). Organ builder. In 1816 he was a ‘machine maker (woolen)’ in Rochdale, Lancashire. He was recorded as an organ builder in 1824 and as a piano maker in the following year. His business flourished: he built an organ for the Rev. Patrick Brontë at Howarth, Yorkshire, in 1834 and he is known to have exported to Melbourne, Australia in 1842. Some of his pipework and casework survives, notably at the Countess of Huntingdon's Chapel (now Huntingdon Hall), Worcester (1840), St John the Baptist's, Fladbury, Worcestershire (1838), and St John's, Smallbridge, near Rochdale (1844). By his first marriage he had nine children, of whom five became organ builders, and by his second, six children, of whom two became organ builders.

In 1861 he moved to Walsall with his youngest son, Charles Henry Nicholson (b Rochdale, 1840; d ?Walsall, after 1900), where they set up a general retail music business, but also continued to build organs as Nicholson & Son. During the early 1870s Charles Henry, who had worked for the piano firm Kirkman, formed a business partnership with Edmund Lord (b Rochdale, c1832), who was probably trained by Richard and had moved to Walsall with them. The firm of Nicholson & Lord was highly productive and continued, latterly as an organ tuning concern, until 1952.

Circumstantial evidence suggests that Richard sold the Rochdale business to T.H. Harrison (see Harrison & Harrison) when he moved to Walsall; there may have been some intermarriage between the two organ-building families. Of Richard's other organ-builder sons, the eldest, (3) John Nicholson (ii), was the most prominent. His second son, James Nicholson (b Rochdale, 1819; d ?1890), was an organ builder in Newcastle upon Tyne by 1843. He was succeeded in business there by his son, F.C. Nicholson (b Milnrow, nr Rochdale, bap. 5 Sept 1841). Richard's third son, Joseph Nicholson (b Rochdale, 1822–3; d Macclesfield, 26 July 1855), was first an apprentice in an iron foundry, but had became an independent organ builder in Macclesfield by the 1850s. He died when a ‘splinter broke off’ from a wooden pipe and ‘penetrated to his brain’. Richard's eldest son (third child) by his second marriage, Thomas Haigh Nicholson (b Rochdale, 1835; d Southport, 26 May 1910), worked as an organ builder in Lincoln and later in Southport.

Nicholson

(2) John Nicholson (i)

(bap. Warley, 2 Oct 1791; d ?Bradford, 17 April 1851). Organ builder, brother of (1) Richard Nicholson. He worked initially as a joiner, but was building organs in Bradford with his half-brother, Thomas (b Warley or Halifax, 17 April 1800; d before 1851), probably by 1830 and certainly by 1837; the latter’s first two sons, William (b Heptonstall, Yorkshire, c1825; bur. Rochdale, 4 Dec 1851) and RIchard (ii) (b Bradford, 1 Oct 1833), were recorded in Rochdale in 1851, respectively, as a ‘metal pipemaker’ and organ builder. John's eldest son, Frederick Whitworth Nicholson (bap Bradford, 27 June 1830; d after 1906), succeeded to the business and achieved a considerable reputation as an organ builder in Bradford and Huddersfield. He was probably assisted by his youngest brother, James (b ?1838).

Nicholson

(3) John Nicholson (ii)

(b Rochdale, 15 Jan 1815; d Worcester, 28 Sept 1895). Organ builder, eldest son of (1) Richard Nicholson. He was the best-known member of the organ-building dynasty and produced the most distinguished work. Like his brothers, he almost certainly trained with his father and may have acquired specialized skills as a metal pipe maker. He was listed as having an independent business in Rochdale in 1837, and he moved to Worcester in 1841. Early commissions were possibly aided by his family's Baptist connections in Gloucestershire and Worcestershire. He was almost ruined by a disastrous fire in 1845, but subsequently the business flourished in Palace Yard, close to the Cathedral. An early instrument survives in St Mary and St Nicholas’s, Chetwode, Buckinghamshire (1842). His first large organ was for the Shire Hall, Gloucester (1849). In 1854 he built an outstanding and innovatory concert organ for the Music Hall, Worcester, which attracted much attention, but was destroyed by a ‘storm’ five or six years later. The organ in St Michael and All Angels, Great Witley, Worcestershire (1857) remains in substantially original condition and indicates continental influences. Another outstanding example survives, complete with the original pneumatic-lever action, in All Saints, Shrewsbury (c1880). He enjoyed the patronage of F.A.G. Ouseley, and built a controversial organ, designed by Ouseley, for Manchester Cathedral (1861), of which the pipework has been re-used in an otherwise new instrument in Portsmouth Cathedral (1994). His firm produced over 300 instruments which were distributed throughout central England, with examples in Wales, Scotland, Australia, the Channel Islands and France. His organs resembled in character those of William Hill. His work was of the highest quality; in 1944 Cecil Clutton noted that the firm ‘did as much as anyone to establish the great Victorian school … the few remaining untouched instruments show that the voicing was of the best’. His only son, Joseph Wrigley Nicholson (b Rochdale, 1839; d Southport, 11 March 1873) trained as an organ builder. He and his contemporary T.H. Harrison worked for John (ii) in the West Country.

John Nicholson (ii) retired in 1886. His substantial fortune (he left almost £44,000) may have owed more to money-lending and property speculation than to his original craft. On his retirement control of the business passed to William Haynes, then organist of Malvern Priory, and the firm became known as Nicholson & Co. Following several changes in ownership, it was acquired by J.W. Walker & Company in 1931, but returned to private ownership in 1951 and moved to Malvern shortly afterwards, where it continues to operate, exporting many instruments.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

C. Clutton: ‘The Organ in the Church of the Messiah, Birmingham’, The Organ, xxiv (1944–5), 9

G.D. Rushworth: Historic Organs of New South Wales (Sydney, 1988), 53–5

J. Barker: The Brontës (London, 1995), 210–11

J. Berrow: John Nicholson, Organ Builder of Worcester: Background, Life and Work (diss., U. of Reading, 1996)