Nicholas Hawksmoor's London churches

Map of 5 locations in London, United Kingdom

Parliament's Act of May 1711 funded fifty new churches out of a tax on coal, and it put Nicholas Hawksmoor in as surveyor to the commission. He designed six of them entirely himself, scattered from Lombard Street to the Greenwich waterfront, and they are the clearest surviving run of English Baroque church building anywhere: Gothic spire outlines worked out in Roman masses, each one shaped by the awkward plot it was given. This list follows those six, with the dates, the budgets and the designs that were thrown out along the way.

Places in this collection

  • St Alfege Church, Greenwich — The Greenwich church is one of the six Hawksmoor designed single-handed for the Fifty New Churches commission, and the one where his octago…
  • St George in the East — One of the three East End churches Hawksmoor raised under the Fifty Churches Act, built from 1714 to 1729 alongside St Anne's Limehouse, wh…
  • St Mary Woolnoth — Hawksmoor began the rebuilding in 1716 on a cramped Lombard Street plot a short walk from the Royal Exchange, paid for out of the coal tax…
  • St George's, Bloomsbury — Begun in 1716 and completed in 1731, this was the last church Hawksmoor designed on his own, and one of several he produced for the Fifty N…
  • Christ Church, Spitalfields — Built between 1714 and 1729 under the Act of May 1711 for Fifty New Churches, with Hawksmoor working as the commission's surveyor. The brie…

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