The Arts & Crafts designer Henry Wilson trained initially as an architect under J. D. Sedding (British 1838 - 1891), who had himself been apprenticed to the leading Gothic revival architect George Edmund Street (British 1824 - 1881).
Wilson continued his architectural commissions as his career progressed but worked increasingly in metalwork, sculpture and jewellery. The workshop responsible for completing Wilson’s church designs was Charles Trask & Sons, with whom Sedding and Wilson had collaborated from as early as 1869, on St Martin’s Church, Low Marple near Stockport.
When Wilson first came to Norton-sub-Hamdon, Micklewright was manager of the Charles Trask & Sons workshop, but by the 1920s he owned and ran the premises.
According to the account of Mr Reg. Sweet, an apprentice in the workshop from 1923-25, the business employed at least eight craftsmen carrying out work predominantly in oak and of a religious nature. Sweet recalls Micklewright’s perfectionist tendencies but lack of business sense, the latter a factor presumably behind the workshop’s premature closure in 1925.
