Tite, Sir William (1798–1873). English architect. He began his career by designing the Classical Mill Hill School, Mddx; (1825–7), and later laid out the South Metropolitan Cemetery, Norwood, London (1838), with Gothic Revival chapels (demolished) and gates. He is best known for the Royal Exchange, City of London (1842–4), an opulent, perhaps rather coarsely detailed building, with a massive Corinthian portico. He designed many railway-stations, including the very handsome Classical one at Gosport, Hants. (1840–2). His Rundbogenstil Byzantine polychrome Church of St James, Gerrard's Cross, Bucks. (1858–9), is one of his best buildings, and shows that he was an accomplished eclectic designer. His Gothic railway-stations at Carlisle, Cumb. (1847), and Perth, Scotland (1848), are more successful architecturally than his churches in that style. He laid out the London Necropolis Cemetery, Brookwood, Surrey (1853–4), and built most of the stations on the railway-lines on the Caledonian and Scottish Central Railways and on the line from Le Havre to Paris, France. He designed Government House, Termonbacca, Co. Londonderry, Ireland (1846–8—the headquarters of The Honourable The Irish Society of the City of London), and, as a member of the Metropolitan Board of Works, was involved in the construction of the Thames Embankment (1862–70).

Bibliography

B, clxxviii/5578 (1950), 39–42, and 5579, 95–8;
Biddle (1973);
Binney & Pearce (eds.) (1979);
Colvin (1995);
J. Curl (1986, 2000a);
Hitchcock (1954);
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004);
Jane Turner (1996)