Charles Wilson was born on 19 June 1810, probably in Glasgow, the fifth son of Thomas (some sources give 'John' but this is incorrect) Wilson, a Glasgow master mason and builder, and Margaret Lambie. He worked for his father for several years prior to being articled to David Hamilton in 1827. In the Hamiltons' combined house and office at 235 Buchanan Street, Wilson became in Gildard's words 'a favourite pupil' and was given free access to Hamilton's excellent library. There he worked on Hamilton Palace, the Royal Exchange, Toward Castle, the Normal School, Lennox Castle and Campsie Parish Church at Lennoxtown. His work at Hamilton Palace probably enabled him to study the collection of drawings commissioned for the Palace by the 10th Duke of Hamilton in Italy and France, notably from Percier and Fontaine: these may well have had some bearing on the sophistication ('feminine elegance' as Gildard described it) of his subsequent classical work in independent practice.
Wilson remained with Hamilton as principal assistant from 1833 for a time working with Hamilton's son James on Lennox Castle, the neo-Norman style of which was to influence some of his early church work. In 1837 he left to take over his father's business, his elder brother John being made senior partner at his father's insistence according to Gildard, the firm name being John & Charles Wilson, architects and builders. But as Gildard put it, John was the 'back seat' man in the business. In fact he was a sugar planter in Trinidad and presumably simply provided capital for his brother's business. In 1839 their partnership was dissolved, Charles thereafter practising only as an architect from 41 George Square.
Wilson's earliest works were an exceptionally refined neo-Greek United Presbyterian church in Pladda Street and a number of Italianate villas, the style of which he developed from the Hamiltons' later houses in that vein. But within a few years he had effectively succeeded to the Hamiltons' practice. Although James Hamilton had made an extensive continental study tour in 1839-40 and the Hamilton practice should have been at the peak of its prosperity with numerous major commissions in these years, it was in financial difficulties as a result of building speculation with the Smiths in Royal Exchange Square: with these the departure of Hamilton's elder surviving son John to North America in 1839 and a £500 public testimonial raised for David Hamilton in 1840 appear to have been connected. The practice was sequestrated in 1844 following David Hamilton's death and his son James had to give up independent practice. These difficulties resulted in Wilson being commissioned to design the City Lunatic Asylum at the early age of thirty. For this project Wilson made a study tour of such institutions in England and France enabling him to see the latest classical work in Paris, particularly that of Duban and Labrouste, and perhaps acquire architectural publications less readily available at home. Throughout the 1840s and 1850s the influence of French and German round-arched classicism, particularly that of the Munich school, became increasingly evident. Triplets of round-arched windows in rectangular recesses became a favourite motif and extended into the work of his pupils Boucher & Cousland, and of John Burnet Senior. Although his villas tended to be comfortably scaled, an ever-increasing monumentality of scale and originality of concept became evident in his public buildings, culminating in the Alberti-like Queens Rooms, 1856, and his competition win in the same year for the Free Church College, the design of which was experimented with and refined over several years prior to building in 1859-61. Although commissioned separately, the College was designed as the dominant element of Wilson's ambitious Park development. This originated in 1851 when he produced an overall plan for terraced housing to the north west of the city stretching across the Kelvin to Gilmorehill and superseding James Wylson's competition-winning scheme of 1848 for the latter. The title of his plan does not give any client. It is not clear who initiated it as it embraced several separate ownerships, but it was prompted by the failure of the scheme to remove the University of Glasgow from High Street to Woodlands Hill. In the following year, 1852, the City began buying up Woodlands Hill and Kelvingrove to implement the scheme and create the West End Park, now Kelvingrove Park. Although the northern Woodlands area was eventually developed on quite different lines and the Gilmorehill land was to be developed by the University some ten years later, the core of Wilson's 1851 scheme provided the basic concept of that published in 1855. Work had in fact begun two years earlier in association with Sir Joseph Paxton and the Glasgow surveyor Thomas Kyle when a few houses at the west end of Park Terrace were built. Although Park Circus, the central hub of the scheme, remained faithful to Wilson's Italian Renaissance ideals, the houses of Park Terrace had innovative French pavilion roofs and canted bays, David Thomson subsequently expressing the view that Wilson's concept had been to sweep the hilltop up into a crown.
Apart from Lews Castle in Stornoway, built for the Hong Kong magnate Sir James Matheson, Wilson's most important clients for large houses were in the Dundee area and were centred on the Baxter family. Three of their houses were accomplished Italianate villas, but the others were designed in a refined Scots Jacobean idiom with strapwork details derived from the Old College of Glasgow.
Wilson married Helen King Cleland (1821-1902) on 21 June 1842, three years after commencing independent practice. They lived at 29 Bath Street and had two sons and a daughter. Their children were Charles (b and d 1848); Margaret Lambie (b.1847 d.1849); James Cleland (b.1850 d.1871) and George Charles (b.1853 d.1885 in Trinidad). Recent research shows that she was the daughter of James Cleland, builder, rather than James Cleland, Superintendent of Public Works in Glasgow. Little is known of the rest of his personal life: although a friend of Alexander Thomson, he was not part of the circle centred on Mossman's studio and no gossip has come down to us. The brief references by his assistant Thomas Ross and David Thomson in their memoirs suggest that the office regime was a kindly and considerate one.
Wilson was one of the council members of the Architectural Institute of Scotland when it was refounded in 1850, and he was elected to the Council of the Glasgow Architectural Society when it was formed on 25 January 1858. He gave its first address, a discussion of ancient and modern Glasgow. He succeeded John Baird Primus as its President on 15 October 1860, but his health began to fail and on 21 October 1861 Alexander Thomson was elected as his successor. In the following March David Thomson, for many years his assistant and principal assistant, but who had left the practice to work on his own during 1862, returned and was taken into partnership. He was probably effectively responsible for the practice from that date, the more rugged Scots baronial buildings of those years probably being wholly his. Wilson died of dropsy following disease of the knee and limb at 153 St Vincent Street on 5 or 6 February 1863. Thomson succeeded to his practice and the archive of drawings but not to his important library which his widow sold to the Glasgow Architectural Society.