NICHOLAS HAWKSMOOR: ARCHITECT OF THE ENGLISH BAROQUE AND WREN'S GREAT SUCCESSOR

Nicholas Hawksmoor (1661–1736) is the strangest and, to many, the most compelling of all English architects. He spent the first half of his career in the shadow of Sir Christopher Wren — clerk, draughtsman, then trusted deputy across the great public works of the age — and the second half producing a handful of buildings so original that they have never been comfortably absorbed into any account of British architecture. His six London churches in particular stand apart: heavy, monumental, charged with an atmosphere that three centuries of scholarship has never quite explained. They draw on ancient Rome, on Egypt, and on medieval English Gothic, and seem to belong to none of them entirely.

Hawksmoor built almost nothing abroad and travelled little. His entire output is concentrated in London, Oxford, and a few great country houses, and yet his influence reaches forward in unexpected ways — admired by Victorian Goths, rediscovered by twentieth-century modernists who responded to the sheer mass and abstraction of his forms, and adopted in our own time by novelists and psychogeographers who have made his churches the setting for a whole literature of the uncanny. No other architect of his period has had quite this afterlife.

He was never the sole master of his moment. He worked under Wren, alongside Sir John Vanbrugh, and within the collaborative machinery of the royal Office of Works. Much of his finest work — Greenwich, Kensington Palace, Blenheim, Castle Howard — was shared, and the question of exactly which hand did what remains one of the great puzzles of British architectural history. But where Hawksmoor worked alone, on his churches and on his own designs at Oxford, he produced something that no one before or since has matched.

  • Written by Gavin Paisley, director & model-maker at Chisel & Mouse based in West Sussex, England.
  • Last updated: 10-Jun-26
Christ Church Spitalfields architectural scale model

Nicholas Hawksmoor architectural models

Chisel & Mouse makes models of several of Hawksmoor's buildings, cast in fine plaster and finished by hand in our West Sussex studio. The two great churches are the heart of the collection: Christ Church Spitalfields and St Mary Woolnoth— among our most complex pieces to date, each presented under a glass dome. From Greenwich come the paired Baroque facades of the Royal Naval College — King William Court and the Royal Naval College — Queen Mary Court. And from the western edge of the city, Kensington Palace — the house Wren and Hawksmoor turned into a palace.

See the full Nicholas Hawksmoor collection.

Early life and the road to London

Nicholas Hawksmoor was born in 1661, almost certainly in Nottinghamshire, into a yeoman farming family of modest means. Almost nothing is recorded of his childhood, and unlike Wren — a gentleman scholar, astronomer, and Oxford professor — Hawksmoor had no advantages of birth or formal education to ease his path. What he had was talent, and he came to London to use it.

By about 1679, aged eighteen, he had entered the service of Sir Christopher Wren as a personal clerk. Wren, then Surveyor-General of the King's Works and at the height of his powers, was rebuilding the City of London after the Great Fire of 1666. For a gifted young draughtsman there was no better place in England to learn. Hawksmoor learned by doing — measuring, drawing, supervising — and rose steadily from clerk to draughtsman to indispensable assistant.

The Wren years: an architectural education on the great works

Over the following two decades, Hawksmoor worked at Wren's side on virtually every major royal and public commission of the age. He was involved at St Paul's Cathedral, at the Royal Hospital Chelsea, at Hampton Court Palace, and at Greenwich. Thanks to Wren's influence as Surveyor-General, Hawksmoor secured a series of official posts: he was made Clerk of Works at Kensington Palace in 1689 and Deputy Surveyor of Works at Greenwich in 1705.

This was not merely an apprenticeship. The Office of Works in this period operated as a collaborative studio in which senior figures set the direction and trusted deputies developed and executed the designs. Much of what Hawksmoor produced in these years is bound up inseparably with Wren's name, and disentangling the contributions of the two men is one of the central problems of the scholarship. What is clear is that by the turn of the eighteenth century Hawksmoor was no longer a pupil but an architect of the first rank, capable of conceiving and resolving buildings of the greatest ambition.

Bust by Henry Cheere, licensed by public domain.

The partnership with Vanbrugh: Castle Howard and Blenheim

In 1699, Hawksmoor began one of the defining relationships of his career, working with Sir John Vanbrugh — soldier, playwright, and architect of dramatic instinct but limited technical training. The pairing was ideal. Vanbrugh supplied theatrical vision and grand compositional bravado; Hawksmoor supplied the structural intelligence and the detailed knowledge of construction that turned vision into buildable form.

Together they produced two of the greatest country houses in Britain: Castle Howard in Yorkshire (begun 1699) and Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire (begun 1705), the nation's gift to the Duke of Marlborough. At Castle Howard, Hawksmoor later designed, entirely on his own, the Mausoleum (begun 1729) — a circular, austere, almost frightening building that is among the supreme achievements of English classicism and a building Wren himself might never have imagined.

The six London churches: 1711–1733

In 1711, Parliament passed the Act for Building Fifty New Churches, a scheme to provide places of worship for the rapidly growing suburbs and dockland parishes of London. Hawksmoor was appointed one of the two surveyors to the commission, and it is here — finally working as principal designer rather than deputy — that he produced the work for which he is most remembered.

Of the dozen or so churches eventually built under the Act, six were designed by Hawksmoor alone:

  • Christ Church Spitalfields (1714–29)
  • St Anne's Limehouse (1714–30)
  • St George-in-the-East, Wapping (1714–29)
  • St Mary Woolnoth, in the City (1716–27)
  • St George's Bloomsbury (1716–31)
  • St Alfege Greenwich (1712–18)

A further two — St John Horsleydown and St Luke Old Street — he designed jointly with John James.

These are not conventional Baroque churches. Hawksmoor reached past the immediate models of Rome and the Continent to the deep past: to the temples of antiquity, to the half-imagined architecture of the early Christian and pre-Christian world, to the towers of English medieval churches. The result is a group of buildings of extraordinary mass and presence — broad, blunt, weighty, theatrical in their handling of light and shadow, and almost primitive in their refusal of ornamental sweetness. They look like nothing else of their century. Two of them — Christ Church Spitalfields and St Mary Woolnoth — are modelled by Chisel & Mouse, and explored in full in our Christ Church Spitalfields architecture guide and St Mary Woolnoth architecture guide.

Kensington Palace

Hawksmoor's involvement at Kensington Palace began at the very start of his official career. In 1689, when William III and Mary II commissioned Wren to turn the modest Jacobean Nottingham House into a royal residence, Hawksmoor was the Clerk of Works on the project — instructed, famously, to build quickly and cheaply, which is why the palace is brick rather than stone. He drew the design for the King's Gallery range in 1695–96, and later, under Queen Anne, contributed with Wren and Vanbrugh to the celebrated Orangery (finished 1705).

For the full story of the building, see our Kensington Palace architecture guide.

Greenwich: the Royal Hospital for Seamen

At Greenwich, Hawksmoor served as Deputy Surveyor under Wren from 1705, working on the Royal Hospital for Seamen — later the Royal Naval College — across several decades. The complex is the supreme set-piece of English Baroque urbanism: four great blocks framing a vista from the Thames up to the Queen's House and the hill beyond. Wren conceived the master plan; Hawksmoor, Vanbrugh, and others developed and completed it over more than half a century.

Hawksmoor's hand is felt most strongly in the King William Court, which houses the Painted Hall, while the paired Queen Mary Court, which houses the Chapel, was completed to Wren's layout under Thomas Ripley. The two domed courts face each other across the central axis. Chisel & Mouse models both — see our King William Court and Queen Mary Court guides.

Oxford, Westminster, and the late years

Away from London, Hawksmoor worked extensively at Oxford, where he designed the Clarendon Building (1711–15), the great north quadrangle and twin towers of All Souls College (from 1716), and produced designs for a domed library on the site that eventually became the Radcliffe Camera. At Westminster Abbey, where he was Surveyor from 1723, he designed the west towers — the building's familiar silhouette — which were completed to his designs in 1745, nine years after his death.

The late years were not easy. In 1718, when the amateur William Benson replaced the aged Wren as Surveyor-General, Hawksmoor was stripped of his double post to make room for Benson's brother — a piece of political jobbery that Vanbrugh protested bitterly. "Poor Hawksmoor," he wrote, lamenting the barbarous age into which so ingenious a man had fallen. Hawksmoor suffered increasingly from gout and from a sense, not unjustified, that his gifts were undervalued. He died on 25 March 1736 and was buried at Shenley in Hertfordshire.

The Hawksmoor afterlife: from neglect to cult

For much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Hawksmoor was a half-forgotten figure, overshadowed by Wren and dismissed by Georgian taste as heavy and barbarous. His reputation began to recover only in the twentieth century, when architects and critics — among them the great modernists, who responded to the sheer abstract mass of his forms — came to see in his work a power that smoother classicism lacked. The scholar Kerry Downes established the serious modern study of his architecture.

Then came the cult. In 1975, the poet Iain Sinclair, in Lud Heat, proposed that Hawksmoor's London churches were laid out along sinister lines of force, charging the city with a hidden geometry. A decade later, Peter Ackroyd's novel Hawksmoor (1985) reimagined the architect as an occultist building churches steeped in ritual and murder. The idea has no basis in the historical record — but it has fixed itself to the buildings, and few people now visit Christ Church Spitalfields or St George-in-the-East without some sense of the strangeness that the novelists found there. It is a rare thing for an architect to acquire a mythology. Hawksmoor has one, and his buildings carry it.

Key buildings

St Alfege Greenwich (1712–18) — the first of the Fifty New Churches; the steeple later by John James.

Christ Church Spitalfields (1714–29) — his masterpiece among the churches; broad portico and towering broach spire.

St Anne's Limehouse (1714–30) — a dockland landmark with a great west tower visible far down the Thames.

St George-in-the-East, Wapping (1714–29) — gutted in the Blitz, its powerful shell preserved.

St Mary Woolnoth (1716–27) — his only church in the City of London; compact, rusticated, and utterly original.

St George's Bloomsbury (1716–31) — crowned by a stepped pyramid spire modelled on the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus.

Castle Howard, Yorkshire (with Vanbrugh, from 1699; the Mausoleum from 1729) — and Blenheim Palace (with Vanbrugh, from 1705).

Clarendon Building (1711–15) and All Souls College north quadrangle and twin towers (from 1716), Oxford.

Kensington Palace (clerk of works from 1689; King's Gallery; Orangery, with Wren and Vanbrugh).

Royal Hospital for Seamen, Greenwich (Deputy Surveyor from 1705) — King William and Queen Mary Courts.

Westminster Abbey west towers (designed by 1734; completed 1745).

Influence and legacy

Hawksmoor's legacy is unusual because it skips centuries. He had no real school and few direct followers; the Palladian reaction that dominated English architecture after his death set its face against everything he stood for. His influence works instead by recurrence — surfacing in Lutyens's monumental classicism, in the stripped abstraction admired by twentieth-century modernists, and in a contemporary fascination that is as much literary and atmospheric as architectural.

What endures above all is the originality. Hawksmoor took the common language of classical architecture and used it to say things no one else thought to say — building mass into meaning, turning churches into something closer to monuments, reaching back past the Renaissance to the imagined architecture of the ancient world. Three hundred years on, his buildings still stop people in the street. Few architects can claim as much.

Frequently asked questions about Nicholas Hawksmoor

Who was Nicholas Hawksmoor?

Nicholas Hawksmoor (1661–1736) was an English architect and the leading figure of the late English Baroque. He trained under Sir Christopher Wren, worked across the great public buildings of the age, and then designed a celebrated group of London churches and other works that are among the most original buildings in Britain.

What is Nicholas Hawksmoor famous for?

He is best known for his six London churches — including Christ Church Spitalfields and St Mary Woolnoth — built under the Act for Building Fifty New Churches. He is also famous for his collaborative work at Greenwich, Kensington Palace, Blenheim, and Castle Howard, and for the west towers of Westminster Abbey, completed to his designs after his death.

When did Nicholas Hawksmoor live?

Hawksmoor was born in 1661, almost certainly in Nottinghamshire, and died on 25 March 1736. He was buried at Shenley in Hertfordshire.

What are Hawksmoor's six London churches?

The six churches Hawksmoor designed alone are Christ Church Spitalfields, St Anne's Limehouse, St George-in-the-East (Wapping), St Mary Woolnoth, St George's Bloomsbury, and St Alfege Greenwich. He also designed two further churches jointly with John James.

What was the relationship between Hawksmoor and Christopher Wren?

Hawksmoor entered Wren's service around 1679, aged about eighteen, and became his clerk, draughtsman, and trusted deputy. He worked at Wren's side on St Paul's Cathedral, Greenwich, Hampton Court, and Kensington Palace before emerging as a principal designer in his own right. Much of his early work is bound up inseparably with Wren's.

What architectural style did Hawksmoor work in?

Hawksmoor worked in the English Baroque, but in a highly personal form. He reached past the Continental Baroque to ancient Rome, to Egypt, and to English medieval Gothic, fusing these sources into buildings of exceptional mass, austerity, and monumentality — quite unlike anything else of their century.

Why is there a "cult" around Hawksmoor?

In the later twentieth century, Hawksmoor's churches became the focus of a literary and psychogeographical fascination — beginning with Iain Sinclair's Lud Heat (1975), which imagined sinister alignments between them, and Peter Ackroyd's novel Hawksmoor (1985), which reimagined the architect as an occultist. The ideas have no basis in the historical record, but they have attached a powerful aura of mystery to the buildings.

Sources and further reading

  • Wikipedia — 'Nicholas Hawksmoor' — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Hawksmoor — Biography and complete works
  • Kerry Downes — Hawksmoor (Thames & Hudson, World of Art series) — The standard modern study of the architect
  • Vaughan Hart — Nicholas Hawksmoor: Rebuilding Ancient Wonders (Yale University Press, 2002) — On Hawksmoor's use of antique and primitive sources
  • Historic England — National Heritage List for England — listing descriptions for the churches, Greenwich, and Kensington Palace
  • Old Royal Naval College — ornc.org — History of the Greenwich buildings and the Painted Hall
  • Historic Royal Palaces — hrp.org.uk — History of Kensington Palace
  • Iain Sinclair — Lud Heat (1975) and Peter Ackroyd — Hawksmoor (1985) — the literary afterlife of the churches

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