Nicholas Hawksmoor was the major architect of the English Baroque. His legacy to London was six churches - each a jewel.
The Baroque isn't a style that ever really succeeded in England. Perhaps it was too far from the English virtues of reticence and understatement. But the traveller in London can find six tiny Baroque gems – all churches built by Nicholas Hawksmoor to fulfil the requirements of a little known piece of legislation, the Fifty New Churches Act of 1711.
St Alphage, Greenwich is the earliest and least impressive of these churches, but Hawksmoor’s trademark simplicity is already in evidence. Surfaces are plain, and mouldings are simple. The apse, in particular, contrasts the yawning black openings of the windows with massive, plain white walls. The church is only open on weekend afternoons.
Hawksmoor's Abstract Style
St Anne, Limehouse, out in the wastelands of the east end, is only open for services. But its most intriguing features, its towers and corner turrets, are visible from outside. The tower is a typical piece of Hawksmoor abstraction, using tall restraining arches to create a sense of vertical movement, and creating an octagonal lantern out of pilasters – huge abrupt blocks of masonry. The corners of the church also have their own small towers, which may have originally been planned to carry pyramids. (You can see one of the pyramids resting in the graveyard, never having been put in place.)
St George in the East is another east end church with a remarkable tower and strange turrets. The arches that rise up the sides of the tower seem deeper than at St Anne, and the two turrets are more like minarets than conventional spires. Following bomb damage in the Second World War, the church exterior was restored – but a completely new, modern church was built inside.
A Baroque Extravaganza
St George’s, Bloomsbury, was recently restored after years of neglect. Hawksmoor here had to contend with an odd site, longer from north to south than east to west, making a correctly orientated building tricky. He created a square church by sectioning off the northern part of the church to make a vestry space, and then made the tiny space that was left seem larger by raising the roof high above and filling the space with light. The church is now open at weekends, and weekday lunchtimes.
It’s the tower that makes this church come alive, though. Hawksmoor was inspired by Pliny’s description of the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus – but he enlivens the classical architecture with a statue of George I at the top, and lions and unicorns at the corners.
A Strikingly Original Facade
Christ Church Spitalfields is one of Hawksmoor’s most striking façades, with the single obelisk-like spire rising sheer from a porticoed tower. It’s classical, but seems almost modernist in its powerful abstraction. This is an amazing bold church – and a huge one, which vastly exceeded its budget. The interior is immensely high, with colonnades on the east and west walls – recalling the classical Roman basilica – as well as arcades running the length of the nave.
St Mary Woolnoth, right in the centre of the financial district, is a complete contrast to Spitalfield’s vertical aspiration with its aggressively rusticated façade. The two square towers are crushed into a single mass, and the whole façade looks brutally geometrical and incredibly intense. Yet inside, you emerge from the dark brooding of the façade to a luminous space, a cube within a cube, only a shallow niche extending the church to the east. A strong, prominent cornice runs round the entire church above the four supporting columns, forming an emphatic accent. A true City church, it’s only open on weekdays.
The Bare Bones of Architecture
Hawksmoor’s style can be abrupt, even ugly, but he’s a truly radical architect who gets right down to the bare bones of architecture. While Wren can be pretty, Hawksmoor never is; but each one of his churches is a true original.
