St Mary Woolnoth, Bank Station - a Hawksmoor tour 4

Although quite a lot is known about Nicolas Hawksmoor’s professional life, very little is known of his private life or his personality and for that reason he remains a relatively enigmatic figure. He was born in 1661 or 1662 at East Drayton in Nottinghamshire. He probably went to grammar school and he worked first as a Judge’s clerk before moving to London at the age of 18 to work as a domestic clerk for Sir Christopher Wren, Surveyor of Works to King Charles II. Hawksmoor remained closely associated with Wren for the rest of his employers life. His duties within his mentors household changed and he became almost exclusively involved in working on Wren’s architectural projects. He was senior draftsman on the reconstruction of St Paul’s for more than 19 years and he worked on the construction of the Royal Naval Hospital in Greenwich. In 1699 he met Vanbrugh and worked with him on the Earl of Carlisle’s home at Castle Howard and the Duke of Marlborough’s Bleinham Palace. He did independent work in Oxford and Cambridge, including the remodelling of All Soul’s College in Oxford and designed the two West Towers of Westminster Abbey (which most people assume are the same age of the rest of the medieval building but are in fact only 300 years old). But his most celebrated achievements are the six London churches he built following the 1711 Act of Parliament requiring 50 new churches to be built in the capital and its suburbs. The act set up a commission, headed by Sir Christopher Wren to direct the work. Wren appointed Hawksmoor to work on designing and building the new churches. Only 12 of the 50 were built by the time the commission was wound up in 1733; 6 of them exclusive Hawksmoor creations, and two others designed in collaboration with John James (who was another of the commissioners).

Hawksmoor’s work wasn’t always appreciated. Horace Walpole called St George’s “a masterpiece of absurdity” (though, to be fair, he also said that Hawksmoor’s Mausoleum at Castle Howard was so beautiful it would tempt one to be buried alive), the London Guide of 1876 described it was the “the most pretentious and ugliest edifice in the metropolis”, a sentiment echoed by Pevsner who also described it as ugly. After arousing a fair amount of controversy in his own lifetime, in the 19th century and for much of the 20th century Hawksmoor aroused only indifference. By the 1950’s Christ Church at Spitalfields was scheduled for demolition.