Amon Wilds
| Amon Wilds | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1762 Lewes, England |
| Died | 12 September 1833 (aged 70–71) Brighton, England |
| Nationality | English |
| Occupation | Architect |
| Buildings | Castle Place, Lewes; Holy Trinity Church, Brighton; The Temple, Brighton; Union Chapel, Brighton |
| Projects | Extension to All Saints Church, Lewes; Regency Square; Kemp Town; Brunswick estate |
Amon Wilds (1762 – 12 September 1833) was an English architect and builder. He formed an architectural partnership with his son Amon Henry Wilds in 1806 and started working in the fashionable and growing seaside resort of Brighton, on the East Sussex coast, in 1815. After 1822, when the father-and-son partnership met and joined up with Charles Busby, they were commissioned—separately or jointly—to design a wide range of buildings in the town, which was experiencing an unprecedented demand for residential development and other facilities. Wilds senior also carried out much work on his own, but the description "Wilds and Busby" was often used on designs, making individual attribution difficult. Wilds senior and his partners are remembered most for his work in post-Regency Brighton, where most of their houses, churches and hotels built in a bold Regency style remain—in particular, the distinctive and visionary Kemp Town and Brunswick estates on the edges of Brighton, whose constituent parts are Grade I listed buildings.
Wilds senior was born at Lewes, the county town of East Sussex, in 1762, and became a builder and carpenter. He later moved into the field of architecture and design, and after his son developed an interest in the same activities they formed a building firm in Lewes in about 1806. Wilds senior's first independent design commission was an extension to the nave of All Saints Church in Lewes, which he executed in red brick in contrast to the flint tower. In 1810, he built Castle Place on the High Street, part of which was later converted into a house for the palaeontologist Gideon Mantell. This was the first of many buildings (mostly in Brighton) on which the Wilds' signature motif, the ammonite capital, was used. Consisting of an ammonite-shaped Ionic-style capital on top of a pilaster, this design was particularly liked by the Wilds because it represented a pun on their first names.
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