38 Facts About Ewan Christian

Ewan Christian is most frequently noted for the restorations of Southwell Minster and Carlisle Cathedral, and the design of the National Portrait Gallery.

Ewan Christian was Architect to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners from 1851 to 1895.

Ewan Christian is well-known for designing the National Portrait Gallery in St Martin's Place, London, just north of Trafalgar Square.

Ewan Christian was obliged to match the Greek Classical style of the National Gallery, which was set immediately to the south of the NPG site and adjoined it on its east side, but he provided a strikingly original design for his main north block towards Charing Cross Road based on the style of a Florentine Renaissance palazzo.

Ewan Christian is flanked by busts of Thomas Carlyle and Thomas Babington Macaulay, historians who gave support to the idea of a National Portrait Gallery.

The entrance frontage is modelled on the facade of the late 15th-century oratory of Santo Spirito in Bologna which Ewan Christian probably saw on one of his earlier Italian study tours.

Ewan Christian was born in Marylebone, London, on 20 September 1814, the seventh of nine children.

Ewan Christian was educated at Christ's Hospital School from the age of nine, first at the junior school in Hertford then at the main school in Newgate Street, London.

On his 15th birthday Ewan Christian was articled to the London architect Matthew Habershon and enrolled at the Royal Academy Schools.

Between 1841 and 1842 Ewan Christian embarked on a long continental study tour in company with other young architects who were to remain lifelong friends and following this he established his own architectural practice in October 1842 at 44 Bloomsbury Square, London, where he lived.

On his marriage in 1848 to Annie Bentham, a relation of the Utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham, Ewan Christian set up home in Hampstead in the north London suburbs while continuing his business in Bloomsbury.

Ewan Christian became one of the most respected and successful men in his profession and was highly regarded by many leading architects of the Victorian era.

Ewan Christian was made an associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1840 and a Fellow in 1850 at the age of 36.

Ewan Christian was elected vice-president of the institute in 1880 and reached the height of his career when he served as president of the RIBA from 1884 to 1886 and was awarded the institute's Royal Gold Medal in 1887.

Ewan Christian carried out about 1,300 restorations and additions to churches throughout England and Wales and built some 90 complete new churches, as well as building, restoring and adding to many vicarages, deaneries, canonries and bishops palaces.

On his appointment Ewan Christian moved his practice into the Commissioners premises in Whitehall Place, Westminster, later converting nearby stables into his offices when the Commissioners needed more space.

Ewan Christian read Matthew Henry's Exposition of the Old and New Testaments daily and kept Sunday free of business.

The St Giles' Church, Skelton, is an example of the Early English style of Gothic architecture which Ewan Christian admired and was built about the year 1247, probably by the masons of York Minster's south transept.

Ewan Christian was later appointed to restore the church, providing it with a new open timber roof in 1882.

Ewan Christian gained some recognition from these achievements, particularly from supporters of the Gothic Revival in architecture, and he went on to win the competition for the restoration of St Mary's Church, Scarborough in 1847 which he called "the cornerstone of success".

That year Ewan Christian was appointed Consulting Architect to the Lichfield Diocesan Church Building Society and became a consulting architect to the Incorporated Church Building Society, a body established in 1818 for funding the building and restoration of churches throughout the country.

The building of the pyramidal spires on the western towers restored a lost feature to the church: the originals had been destroyed in a fire of 1711 and Ewan Christian's work replaced flat roofs of 1802.

The red-brick tower Ewan Christian provided for Holy Trinity Church, Dalston, in the London Borough of Hackney, is set high over the crossing and is reminiscent of the work of Samuel Sanders Teulon.

Ewan Christian set the tower at the south-east corner of the church and provided three stepbacks from there towards the west which resulted in the church's stepped and gabled exterior to the south wall.

At the west end Ewan Christian provided a triangular vestibule below the level of the west window to fit within the boundary; it was demolished when the church was extended to the west by one bay in 1904.

The composition of Minor Canonries that Ewan Christian designed as residences for canons of St Paul's Cathedral, London in nearby Amen Court is in the manner of Norman Shaw's Domestic Revival architecture, inspired by original Elizabethan and Jacobean buildings.

Also in an attractive Shaw style were two large convalescent homes which Ewan Christian designed, the first at Folkestone in Kent and the second, the Surrey Convalescent Home at Seaford, East Sussex, both had the usual bold display of heavy mullioned and transomed stone windows, big gables, tall chimneystacks and dormers.

Ewan Christian commented in his own list of works that the house had 'brought many others in its train'.

Malwood, a house Ewan Christian designed near Minstead in Hampshire was built for the Liberal statesman Sir William Harcourt and shows the influence of the architect Norman Shaw's 'Old English' style.

Ewan Christian designed the building for its setting in the ridge-top clearing of a wood, close to the ancient earthworks of an Iron Age hill fort.

Ewan Christian personally inspected the 54 churches, strenuous and sometimes dangerous work, undertaken when he was over 70 years old.

Ewan Christian has rarely been regarded as a genius in the architectural world, and his work has been much criticised since his death as being generally dull and lifeless and often lacking elegance and grace.

Ewan Christian was at least regarded as a safe pair of hands for any commission committed to him and was always seen to be reliable, competent and conscientious in his work.

Ewan Christian was renowned for the solidity of his constructions and hated shoddy workmanship and 'sham' frontages.

Ewan Christian's concern for solid building was an influence on his assessments for the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, as shown when he annoyed William Butterfield by insisting that the architect thicken the walls in his design of St John's Church at Clevedon, Somerset.

Ewan Christian scrupulously kept within his employers' budget and was always concerned to meet the client's needs and requirements for a commission, as is shown in his work for W H Alexander on the National Portrait Gallery.

Ewan Christian was more than capable of producing outstanding architecture when the commission and the funding allowed him the opportunity, as at St Mark's Church in Leicester and at St Matthew's in Cheltenham; and as his own house in Hampstead proves.

Ewan Christian calls Ewan Christian "a revolutionary with a touch of genius".