Architecture for Kids
Nicholas Hawksmoor
1661-1736
St. Alfege, Greenwich, England 1712-14
The church's ceiling is the largest suspended oval ceiling in Western
Europe.
Nicholas Hawsmoor is an English architect who was involved
in the development of most of the great English Baroque buildings. He was
a student of Sir Christopher Wren and assisted
in the building of Westminster Abbey, designing its towers. He also worked
with Sir John Vanbrugh on Castle Howard and
Blenheim Palace. He is credited with the Kensington Orangery in Kensington
Gardens, Easton Neston in Northhamptonshire (1696-1792), and All Soul's
College in Oxford (1715-1734).
His churches include Christchurch, Spitalfields (1714-1729);
St. Anne's-Limehouse (1712-1730); St. Georges-in-the-East; St. George's,
Bloomsbury (1720-1730); St. Mary Woolnoth, London (1716-1724); and above,
St. Alfege, which is the first of the churches to be built in London after
the fire of 1666 and the only one south of the Thames.