24 Facts About Nicholas Hawksmoor

Nicholas Hawksmoor was a leading figure of the English Baroque style of architecture in the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries.

Nicholas Hawksmoor was born in Nottinghamshire in 1661, into a yeoman farming family, almost certainly in East Drayton or Ragnall, Nottinghamshire.

From about 1684 to about 1700, Nicholas Hawksmoor worked with Wren on projects including Chelsea Hospital, St Paul's Cathedral, Hampton Court Palace and Greenwich Hospital.

Thanks to Wren's influence as Surveyor-General, Nicholas Hawksmoor was named Clerk of the Works at Kensington Palace and Deputy Surveyor of Works at Greenwich.

In 1718, when Wren was superseded by the new, amateur Surveyor, William Benson, Nicholas Hawksmoor was deprived of his double post to provide places for Benson's brother.

In 1696, Nicholas Hawksmoor was appointed surveyor to the Westminster and Middlesex Commission of Sewers, but was dismissed in 1700, having neglected to attend the Court several days last past.

In 1702, Nicholas Hawksmoor designed the baroque country house of Easton Neston in Northamptonshire for Sir William Fermor.

Nicholas Hawksmoor then worked for a time with Sir John Vanbrugh, assisting him on the building Blenheim Palace for John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, where he took charge from 1705, after Vanbrugh's final break with the demanding Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, and Castle Howard for Charles Howard, later the 3rd Earl of Carlisle.

Unlike many of his wealthier contemporaries, Nicholas Hawksmoor never travelled to Italy on a Grand Tour, where he might have been influenced by the style of architecture there.

Plans and wooden models for the scheme survive, but it proved too expensive and Nicholas Hawksmoor produced a second scaled down design.

Nicholas Hawksmoor conceived grand rebuilding schemes for central Oxford, most of which were not realised.

Nicholas Hawksmoor designed the Clarendon Building at Oxford; the Codrington Library and new buildings at All Souls College, Oxford; parts of Worcester College, Oxford with Sir George Clarke; the High Street screen at The Queen's College, Oxford and six new churches in London.

Nicholas Hawksmoor was initiated into freemasonry in 1730 at the Oxford Arms in Ludgate Street, City of London, a lodge belonging to the Premier Grand Lodge of England.

James and Nicholas Hawksmoor remained in office until the commission was wound up in 1733.

The six churches wholly designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor were St Alfege Church, Greenwich; St George's, Bloomsbury; Christ Church, Spitalfields; St George in the East, Wapping; St Mary Woolnoth; and St Anne's Limehouse.

Nicholas Hawksmoor designed a number of structures for the gardens at Castle Howard.

Nicholas Hawksmoor designed the Ripon Obelisk in Ripon's market place, erected in 1702, at 80 feet in height it was the first large scale obelisk to be erected in Britain.

Nicholas Hawksmoor had suffered poor health for the last twenty years of his life and was often confined to bed hardly able to sign his name.

Nicholas Hawksmoor's will instructed that he be buried at the church of St Botolph Shenley, Hertfordshire, Shenleybury, which has been deconsecrated so the tomb now sits in a private garden.

Nicholas Hawksmoor's only child was a daughter, Elizabeth, whose second husband, Nathanial Blackerby, wrote the obituary of his father-in-law.

Nicholas Hawksmoor was perfectly skill'd in the History of Architecture, and could give exact account of all the famous buildings, both Antient and Modern, in every part of the world; to which his excellent memory, that never fail'd him to the very last, greatly contributed.

Nicholas Hawksmoor was a very skilful mathematician, geographer, and geometrician; and in drawing, which he practised to the last, though greatly afflicted with Chiragra, few excelled him.

Nicholas Hawksmoor's architecture has influenced several poets and authors of the twentieth century.

Sinclair promoted the poetic interpretation of the architect's singular style of architectural composition that Nicholas Hawksmoor's churches formed a pattern consistent with the forms of Theistic Satanism though there is no documentary or historic evidence for this.