Basil Nicholson
rugby player
Basil Ellard Nicholson (1 January 1913 – 20 August 1985) was an English international rugby union player.
Born in Lewisham, London, Nicholson was one of six siblings and attended Whitgift School, where he made the 1st XV aged 14, then after leaving turned out for Old Whitgiftians. He later studied engineering at London University.
Nicholson, a fast and elusive centre, was a regular in the Surrey county sides of the 1930s. While playing with Harlequins in 1938, Nicholson got called up by England for their Home Nations campaign, gaining caps in away matches against Wales and Ireland. He also made the British Lions squad for the 1938 tour of South Africa and appeared in the second of the three Test fixtures, against the Springboks in Port Elizabeth. A leg injury picked up during the match ruled him out of the final Test, which he had been expected to feature in as a wing three-quarter.
The public source identifies “Basil Nicholson” as rugby player. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Basil, Nicholson and rugby.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q130425851. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1913, 1985 and 1938.
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This entry incorporates text from “Basil Nicholson” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.