John Loughborough Pearson

John Loughborough Pearson
Portrait by Walter William Ouless, from the National Portrait Gallery (London).
Born	5 July 1817 Brussels, Belgium
Died	11 December 1897
Nationality	British
Occupation	Architect
Awards	Royal Gold Medal (1880)
Buildings	Truro Cathedral
Projects	St Margaret's, Westminster Bristol Cathedral

John Loughborough Pearson RA (5 July 1817 – 11 December 1897) was a Gothic Revival architect renowned for his work on churches and cathedrals. Pearson revived and practised largely the art of vaulting, and acquired in it a proficiency unrivalled in his generation.

Pearson was born in Brussels, Belgium on 5 July 1817. He was the son of William Pearson, etcher, of Durham, and was brought up there. At the age of fourteen he was articled to Ignatius Bonomi, architect, of Durham, whose clergy clientele helped stimulate Pearson's long association with religious architecture, particularly of the Gothic style.

He soon moved to London, where he became a pupil of Philip Hardwick (1792–1870), architect of the Euston Arch and Lincoln's Inn. Pearson lived in central London at 13 Mansfield Street (where a blue plaque commemorates him), and was awarded the RIBA Royal Gold Medal in 1880.

From the erection of his first church at Ellerker, in Yorkshire, in 1843, to that of St Peter's, Vauxhall, in 1864, his buildings are geometrical in manner and exhibit a close adherence to precedent, but elegance of proportion and refinement of detail lift them out of the commonplace of mere imitation. Holy Trinity, Westminster (1848), and St Mary's, Dalton Holme (1858), are notable examples of this phase.

Pearson began his career drawing purely on English medieval prototypes, but increasingly incorporated ideas from abroad: Charles Locke Eastlake described Pearson's Christchurch at Appleton-le-Moors as "modelled on the earliest and severest type of French Gothic, with an admixture of details almost Byzantine in character."