Nicholas Hawksmoor
| Nicholas Hawksmoor | |
|---|---|
| Born | c.1661 Nottinghamshire |
| Died | 25 March 1736 Millbank, London |
| Nationality | English |
| Occupation | Architect |
| Buildings |
Easton Neston Mausoleum Castle Howard Christ Church, Spitalfields St. George's, Bloomsbury St Mary Woolnoth St George in the East St Anne's Limehouse St Alfege Church, Greenwich All Souls College, Oxford The Queen's College, Oxford West Towers of Westminster Abbey |
Nicholas Hawksmoor (probably 1661 – 25 March 1736) was an English architect. He was a leading figure of the English Baroque style of architecture in the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries. Hawksmoor worked alongside the principal architects of the time, Christopher Wren and John Vanbrugh, and contributed to the design of some of the most notable buildings of the period, including St Paul's Cathedral, Wren's City of London churches, Blenheim Palace and Castle Howard. Part of his work has been correctly attributed to him only relatively recently, and his influence has reached several poets and authors of the twentieth century.
Hawksmoor was born in Nottinghamshire in 1661, into a yeoman farming family, almost certainly in East Drayton or Ragnall, Nottinghamshire. On his death he was to leave property at nearby Ragnall, Dunham and a house and land at Great Drayton. It is not known where he received his schooling, but it was probably in more than basic literacy. George Vertue, whose family had property in Hawksmoor's part of Nottinghamshire, wrote in 1731 that he was taken as a youth to act as clerk by "Justice Mellust in Yorkshire, where Mr Gouge senior did some fretwork ceilings afterwards Mr. Haukesmore [sic] came to London, became clerk to Sr. Christopher Wren & thence became an Architect".
Wren, hearing of his "early skill and genius" for architecture, took him on as his clerk at about the age of 18. A surviving early sketch-book contains sketches and notes, some dated 1680 and 1683, of buildings in Nottingham, Coventry, Warwick, Bath, Bristol, Oxford and Northampton. These somewhat amateur drawings, now in the Royal Institute of British Architects Drawings Collection, show that he was still learning the techniques of his new profession at the age of 22. His first official post was as Deputy Surveyor to Wren at Winchester Palace from 1683 until February 1685. Hawksmoor's signature appears on a brickmaker's contract for Winchester Palace in November 1684. Wren was paying him 2 shillings a day in 1685 as assistant in his office in Whitehall.
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