Nicholas Hawksmoor - Hawksmoor's six London churches

Architect, born in East Drayton, Nottinghamshire, C England, UK. His most individual contributions are the London churches, St Mary Woolnoth, St George's (Bloomsbury), and Christ Church (Spitalfields), as well as parts of Queen's College and All Souls, Oxford.

Hawksmoor was characterized by Howard Colvin as "more assured in his command of the classical vocabulary than the untrained Vanbrugh, more imaginative in his vision than the intellectual Wren." From about 1684 to about 1700 Hawksmoor worked with his teacher, Christopher Wren, on projects including Chelsea Hospital, St. Paul's Cathedral (London), Hampton Court Palace and Greenwich Hospital. Thanks to Wren's influence as Surveyor-General, the modest and diffident Hawksmoor was named Clerk of the Works at Kensington Palace (1689) and Deputy Surveyor of Works at Greenwich (1705). In 1718, when Wren was superseded by the new, amateur Surveyor, William Benson, Hawksmoor was deprived of his double post to provide places for Benson's brother, a bitter blow.

He then worked for a time with Sir John Vanbrugh, helping him build Blenheim Palace for John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, where he took charge after Vanbrugh's final break with the demanding Duchess of Marlborough, and Castle Howard for Charles Howard, later the 3rd Earl of Carlisle. There is no doubt that Hawksmoor brought to the brilliant amateur the professional grounding he had received from Wren, and in Colvin's words, "enabled Vanbrugh's heroic designs to be translated into actuality."

In 1702, Hawksmoor designed the baroque country house of Easton Neston in Northamptonshire for Lord Lempster.

Hawksmoor conceived the idea of a round library for the Radcliffe Camera but did not design that building himself.

Unlike many of his contemporaries, Hawksmoor never travelled to Italy where he might have been influenced by the style of architecture there.

Hawksmoor's six London churches

These churches were built in accordance with a Parliamentary Act of 1711 providing tax money for the building of fifty new London churches, but only a dozen of which were actually built. These six churches are Hawksmoor's best-known wholly independent works of architecture.

St Alfege's Church, Greenwich St. George's Church, Bloomsbury Christ Church, Spitalfields St George in the East, Wapping St Mary Woolnoth St Anne's Limehouse