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Nicholas Hawksmoor

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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NICHOLAS HAWKSMOOR (1661-1736), English architect, of Nottinghamshire birth, became a pupil of Sir Christopher Wren at the age of eighteen, and his name is intimately associated with those of Wren and Sir J. Vanbrugh in the English architecture of his time. Through Wren's influence he obtained various official posts, as deputy-surveyor at Chelsea hospital, clerk of the works and deputy-surveyor at Greenwich hospital, clerk of the works at Whitehall, St James's and Westminster, and he succeeded Wren as surveyor-general of Westminster Abbey. He took part in much of the work done by Wren and Vanbrugh, and it is difficult often to assign among them the credit for the designs of various features. Hawksmoor appears, however, to have been responsible for the early Gothic designs of the two towers of All Souls' (Oxford) north quadrangle, and the library and other features at Queen's College (Oxford). At the close of Queen Anne's reign he had a principal part in the scheme for building fifty new churches in London, and himself designed five or six of them, including St Mary Woolnoth (1716-1719) and St George's, Bloomsbury (1720-1730). A number of his drawings have been preserved. He died in London on the 25th of March 1736.