Christ Church Spitalfields Architectural Model

This architectural object is inspired by Christ Church Spitalfields on Commercial Street, on the eastern edge of the City of London — the masterpiece among the London churches of Nicholas Hawksmoor and one of the most extraordinary buildings in the capital. Designed from 1714 and completed in 1729, it was built under the Act for Building Fifty New Churches to serve the Huguenot silk-weaving district that grew up beyond the City walls. What that parish received was not a modest church but a monument — a great portico and a soaring spire that rise some 62 metres and dominate the surrounding streets exactly as they did three centuries ago.

Christ Church is Grade I listed. Closed in 1957 and threatened with demolition, it was rescued by the Friends of Christ Church Spitalfields and reopened, after a painstaking restoration, in 2004 — once again a working church and one of the finest concert and event spaces in London.

Read the full Christ Church Spitalfields architecture guide

A spire that shouts "London"

When we first turned our attention to Hawksmoor, it was Christ Church that drew us in. To us it has always simply shouted "London" — a building of overwhelming mass and presence, theatrical and strange, that stops people in the street. Hawksmoor handed a generous budget of around £7,000, ended up spending close to £40,000, and produced a church unlike anything else of its century: classical in language but reaching back past Rome to something older and more monumental.

This architectural object captures the west front of Christ Church — the elevation that defines the building — because everything Hawksmoor intended is concentrated there:

• the great projecting Tuscan portico, blunt and powerful, reading almost as a triumphal arch
• the Venetian (Serlian) window of the tower, rhyming the arch of the portico above it
• the tall broach spire, a medieval steeple translated into Hawksmoor's monumental classical language
• the single soaring vertical composition that carries the eye from pavement to pinnacle

Presented beneath a glass dome, it is one of the most complex pieces Chisel & Mouse has ever produced.

Why Christ Church works as an architectural object

The building translates with exceptional power into object form because its architecture is governed by:

• mass and proportion rather than fine surface ornament — exactly the qualities that survive reduction to plaster
• a vertical drama built from three stacked elements that reads clearly at any scale
• deep projections that catch a raking light and throw the same shifting shadows that animate the real façade

Rather than functioning as a literal miniature, this object captures the architectural character of Christ Church Spitalfields.

Craft, materials, and finish

Each Christ Church object is hand-cast in fine plaster with etched metal detailing and finished by hand in our West Sussex studio, then presented under a glass dome. A raking light from one side will bring out the depth of the portico and the rise of the spire.

The result is an object that sits naturally within:

• architectural and design studios
• curated interiors
• bookshelves and workspaces

It appeals to architects, lovers of the English Baroque, devotees of Hawksmoor, and anyone for whom this spire simply means London. It pairs especially well with our St Mary Woolnoth model — the two great Hawksmoor churches side by side.

The church at the heart of the Hawksmoor myth

More than any other building, Christ Church is the one that drew writers and artists to Hawksmoor — its brooding presence over a district layered with history made it the natural centre of the literary mythology that grew up around the architect in the later twentieth century, from Iain Sinclair to Peter Ackroyd. Whatever one makes of that mythology, it has fixed the church in the imagination as something more than a beautiful building: a presence, charged with the history of the city around it.

Product details

• Subject: Christ Church Spitalfields, Commercial Street, Spitalfields, London E1 6LY (west front, including central spire)
• Architect: Nicholas Hawksmoor
• Commission: Commissioners for Building Fifty New Churches
• Architectural style: English Baroque
• Completed: 1729 (designed from 1714)
• Designation: Grade I listed
• Designed and made by: Chisel & Mouse

Learn more about Christ Church Spitalfields

For the full story of the building — the Huguenot parish it was built to serve, the budget that ran six times over, the mid-century neglect that nearly destroyed it, and the decades-long campaign that brought it back — see our in-depth architecture guide:

Christ Church Spitalfields Architecture: Nicholas Hawksmoor and London's Great Baroque Church