Comments on: Nicholas Hawksmoor’s Churches

By: Margaret MCDermott

Margaret MCDermott — Sun, 10 Dec 2017 15:59:26 +0000

His churches give me the creeps.I’m sure you know Gentle Author that one of Jack the Rippers victims was found in Brush field St, just below the Spitalfields church Coincidence perhaps.

By: bob ball

bob ball — Fri, 17 Nov 2017 18:05:51 +0000

Dear GA …I love the expression. “These are churches designed to make you feel small when you go in and big when you come out.”

Its most appropriate that you should write this blog now. We gathered at Christ Church last week for the funeral of Amber. My stepdaughter who lived for a while in Rodney Archer’s flat. My modest blog features lighting candles in Christ Church this Sunday.

You have given me a project for Christmas. . Escaping the exigencies of family Christmas I am hiding in the Premier Inn just down the road. I have already lined up the Orange and Lemon churches and now have a new project. Hawksmoor . With Bertie of course.

By: Peter Holford

Peter Holford — Fri, 17 Nov 2017 14:17:20 +0000

Magnificent churches with Christ Church being the greatest (in my opinion). It’s such a shame that his career was stymied after the death of Wren by being superseded by Benson who had the right connections. Hawksmoor lost out again when, in a blatant act of nepotism, Benson appointed his brother as his deputy. I’m sure things like this can’t happen nowadays.

Hawksmoor, after a stint as Commissioner for Sewers in Westminster (he was sacked from that job!) was rescued by Vanburgh. Without Vanburgh we probably wouldn’t have had Hawksmoor’s great churches.

By: Jim McDermott

Jim McDermott — Fri, 17 Nov 2017 10:02:37 +0000

Lovely post! I came late to appreciating Hawksmoor’s work (and laterally, through the overheated but entertaining ‘biography’ by Peter Ackroyd), but have made up for it since. I used to walk past St Mary Woolnoth and suspect that the architects of the Bank of England got their ideas from it – it looks more like a vault for something precious than the bank itself (which I suppose it is, in a way). All of Hawksmoor’s churches are fabulously idiosyncratic – like edifices conceived in a fevered masonic mind.

By: Helen Breen

Helen Breen — Fri, 17 Nov 2017 09:57:08 +0000

Greetings from Boston,

GA, thanks for the informative backdrop on Hawksmoor and his genius. Interesting how the fact that he did not take the classical tour redounded to his advantage (and ours) in that “he fashioned his own English interpretation which was an expression of a Gothic imagination working in the language of Classical architecture.”

Glad that so many survive. Must check them out when I return to London…

By: Robin ballance

Robin ballance — Fri, 17 Nov 2017 09:10:01 +0000

And thanks to Colin Amery and the rest of the Spitalfields Trust for saving Christchurch in Spitalfields along with his work with the World Monuments Fund in Britain for the restoration of St George’s Bloomsbury that included the recarving of the Lion and the Unicorn. For this we owe him a huge debt of thanks in his continued struggle to ensure architectural heritage has been saved

By: Robin ballance

Robin ballance — Fri, 17 Nov 2017 09:08:55 +0000

And thanks to Colin Amery and the rest of the Spitalfields Trust for saving Christchurch in Spitalfields along with his work with the World Monuments Fund in Britain for the restoration of St George’s Bloomsbury that included the recharging of the Lion and the Unicorn. For this we owe him a huge debt of thanks in his continued struggle to ensure architectural heritage has been saved

By: Greg Tingey

Greg Tingey — Fri, 17 Nov 2017 08:45:27 +0000

Christ-Church Spitalfields:
1: I see you were able to get a much better viewpoint than most of us (!)
2: To think that, at one point, a very fashionable sub-bishop ( Huddleston) wanted it demolished.

By: Murray Batley

Murray Batley — Fri, 17 Nov 2017 08:34:55 +0000

Really nice tight informative piece with great photos. First Class!

By: Annie G

Annie G — Fri, 17 Nov 2017 08:17:13 +0000

Thanks for this. His churches always make me feel rather uncomfortable, St George Bloomsbury especially. Perhaps it is time I took time for a visit as well.