Career
Alick Horsnell trained as an architect in the office of Frederick Chancellor Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects in Chelmsford. In 1899 he designed a house for Charles Baskett, then assistant master at Chelmsford School of Art, in Maldon Road, Colchester. lieutenant is distinctive design in the manner of Voysey, with white walls, green slate roof, and a canopy over the front door on curly iron brackets, and is one of Horsnell"s few surviving buildings
He visited France and Italy and the sketches from these visits were well regarded.
Many of them were displayed at the Royal Institute of British Architects in the summer of 1915 and published in the Building News and Engineering Journal in 1915 and 1916.
The Soane medallion was awarded by the Royal Institute of British Architects for his 1910 design of a Shakespeare Memorial Theatre. Moving to London he worked at 2 South Square, Gray"s Inn alongside Charles Gascoyne, George Nott, and Robert Atkinson.
During these pre-war years, he worked as an assistant to Ernest Newton and drew perspectives for notable houses in Cheltenham (Greenway, Shurdington) and Lingfield (Ardenrun Place). One of his last great perspectives was the pencil and watercolour of County Hall, London.
This perspective bought to life the designs of Ralph Knott.
Horsnell"s artistic skills were also seen in his etchings, engravings and watercolours.
He commenced private practice in April 1914. His drawings were selected for the scheme to build a town hall for Middleton near Manchester but this scheme was postponed due to the outbreak of war.
At the outbreak of war he served with the 28th London Regiment before being commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the 7th Suffolk Regiment.
He died in on 1 July 1916 on the first day of the battle of the Somme. His name is recorded on the Thiepval Memorial.
Writing in the Essex County Chronicle and Essex Weekly News on 4 August 1916 Arthur Bartlett FRCA said he was
undoubtedly well ahead of any of his contemporaries in the architectural profession, both in his mastery of design and his powers of execution.He was the happy bearer of the spark of genius which lighted his path and allowed him to step out confidently ahead of his fellows. His unerring instinct in matters of taste enabled him to design in the manner of tomorrow rather than follow on the lines of yesterday, while his gift of brilliant draughtsmanship gave him the power of presenting his ideas in the most attractive form.
Further works are held at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New New York
