John Wilson (English architect)

John Wilson (1781, Dalston, Cumbria – 1866, Shirley, Hampshire) was a Clerk of Works for the Board of Ordnance who became one of the most celebrated architects in the island of Guernsey for the buildings he designed there between 1813 and 1831.

He worked mostly in stucco (which he called 'Roman cement') in the neoclassical, Gothic Revival or Jacobethan styles.

His work with the Board of Ordnance allowed him time to take on private commissions, and his first major project was Torteval Church.

[13][14][15] After he left Guernsey, he was not permitted to take on private commissions, and his only known work in England is a memorial to Sir Alexander Dickson, erected in Woolwich in 1841, and subsequently moved to the Royal School of Artillery in Larkhill, Wiltshire.

In his will, he left £12,000 to his great-nephew and namesake to purchase an estate in his native Cumberland.