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Sir William Tite

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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SIR WILLIAM TITE (1798-1873), British architect, the son of a Russian merchant, was born in London in February 1798. From 1817 to 1820 he assisted in the rebuilding of the body of the church of St Dunstan-in-the-East, and in compiling its history. Between 1827 and 1828 he built the Scottish church, Regent Square, for Edward Irving, and ten years later collaborated with Charles Robert Cockerell in designing the London & Westminster Bank, Lothbury. The rebuilding of the Royal Exchange, opened in 1844, was, however, Tite's greatest undertaking. He also designed many of the early railway stations in England, including the termini of the London & South-Western railway at Vauxhall (Nine Elms) and Southampton; the terminus at Blackwall, 1840; the citadel station at Carlisle, 1847-1848; the majority of the stations on the Caledonian and Scottish Central railways, including Edinburgh, 1847-1848; Chiswick, 1849; Windsor, 1850;1850; and the stations on the Exeter && Yeovil railway. The stations on the line from Havre to Paris are also his work. Between 1853 and 1854 he planned the Woking Cemetery, and between 1858 and 1859 he built a memorial church in the Byzantine style at Gerrard's Cross, Buckinghamshire. Tite's active work ceased about twenty years before his death. In 1851 he visited Italy after a grave illness. In 1854 he contested Barnstaple unsuccessfully as a Liberal, but in the following year was returned to parliament for Bath, which he represented until his death. He keenly opposed Sir George Gilbert Scott's proposal to build the new foreign office and other government buildings adjacent to the treasury in the Gothic style. In 1869 he was knighted, and in 1870 was made a Companion of the Bath. He died on the 10th of April 1873. Tite had a wide knowledge of English literature and was a good linguist; he was an active citizen and a lover of old books.