Background
Nicholas Hawksmoor was born in Nottinghamshire in 1661, into a yeoman farming family.
Nicholas Hawksmoor
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Nicholas Hawksmoor was born in Nottinghamshire in 1661, into a yeoman farming family.
Hawksmoor began to work for Wren about 1679 and owed his professional advancement in part to the political influence of the elder architect. He aided Wren in building St. Paul’s Cathedral (completed 1710) in London and Vanbrugh in constructing Castle Howard (1699–1726) in Yorkshire and Blenheim Palace (1705–25) in Oxfordshire. On Wren’s death (1723), Hawksmoor became surveyor general (chief architect) of Westminster Abbey, the west towers of which were built (1734–45) to his design. Earlier (from 1692) he was responsible for various university buildings at Oxford.
In October 1711 Hawksmoor was appointed one of two surveyors (architects) to a commission to build 50 new churches in the Cities of London and Westminster and their immediate environs. In this capacity he designed, among other churches, the four on which his reputation as a Baroque genius mainly rests: St. Anne (1714–24; consecrated in 1730) in Limehouse, St. George-in-the-East (1714–29) in Wapping Stepney, Christ Church (1714–29) in Spitalfields, and St. Mary Woolnoth (1716–24) in the City of London.
Hawksmoor worked alongside the principal architects of the time, Christopher Wren and John Vanbrugh, and contributed to the design of some of the most notable buildings of the period, including St Paul's Cathedral, Wren's City of London churches, Blenheim Palace and Castle Howard.
Part of his work has been correctly attributed to him only relatively recently, and his influence has reached several poets and authors of the twentieth century.
Some of his inventions, such as the Carrmire Gate, Castle Howard (c. 1730), with its steep pyramids, powerful modelling derived from Serlio, and emphatic qualities, combine the primitive, allusions to Antiquity, and a fascination with geometry, anticipating the most robust and stripped language of late-C18 Neo-Classicism.
He also designed the Pyramid eyecatcher at Castle Howard (1728), the obelisk in the Market Place, Ripon, Yorks (1702), and (with James) the Church of St Luke, Old Street, London (1727–33), with its obelisk-spire.
One of his last designs to be realized (with modifications by its builder, Townesend) was the screen-wall and entrance at Queen's College, Oxford (1733–6), on the High Street.
One of the two most imaginative English Baroque architects (the other was Vanbrugh), he worked with Wren, notably on the Chelsea Hospital, St Paul's Cathedral, and the City Churches, all in London.
All Souls College (1716–34), Oxford
Tower (1718–24), St. Michael, Cornhill, London
The Long Library (1722–25), Blenheim Palace
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