At the age of eighteen, and with a reputation as a competent draftsman, Hawksmoor travelled to London and entered the service of Christopher Wren. Hawksmoor was a brilliant student and absorbed much from his master.
Effectively working as Wren’s apprentice, he became involved in the reconstruction of St Paul’s Cathedral, Wren’s London churches during the 1680’s, the Royal Naval Hospital at Greenwich, and (with Vanbrugh) the building of Castle Howard and Blenheim Palace.
In 1710, the Fifty New Churches Act was passed by Parliament to serve the growing population on the fringes of the expanding city. With Wren now 79 years of age, the commission appointed Hawksmoor as one of its surveyors. Due to mounting costs, only 12 churches were completed. Hawksmoor was solely responsible for the architecture of six of them and collaborated on a further two with fellow commissioner John James. Miraculously, all six of Hawksmoor’s unique city churches have survived to this day.
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Hawksmoor’s Six London Churches:
St Alphege, Greenwich (1712–1714)
St Mary Woolnoth, City of London (1716–1724)
St Anne, Limehouse (1714–1730)
St George-in-the-East, Wapping (1714–1729)
Christchurch, Spitalfields (1714–1729)
St George, Bloomsbury (1716–1731)
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Collaborations with John James:
St Luke Old Street (1727–1733)
St John Horsleydown (1727–1733)
Now regarded as one of the great masters of the English Baroque, Hawksmoor derived his style from a study of antiquity, particularly the seven ancient wonders of the world. He researched engravings of buildings from ancient Rome, Egypt and Greece and took his inspiration from ancient pagan traditions. He is known to have had a rich and eclectic library including books on subjects ranging from Solomon’s Temple to the design of the great Islamic mosques.
Hawksmoor’s churches are unsettling, brooding edifices to a pagan world. His buildings often employ architectural optical illusions that imbue them with an impression of size and weight much greater than their physical reality. Hawksmoor’s striking churches evoke powerful emotions and often awaken feelings of unease in the beholder.
In contemporary fiction, the myth surrounding him has been further fuelled by writers such as Iain Sinclair, Peter Ackroyd and Alan Moore, whose work explores a possible connection with the troubled architect and the occult. I am hugely indebted to these authors, who led me to discover the enigmatic Nicholas Hawksmoor for myself. Even now, Hawksmoor’s churches have the power to disturb and disorientate the senses.
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St George-in-the-East
St George-in-the-East is one of six Nicholas Hawksmoor churches built as part of the Fifty New Churches Act of 1710. The Act was endorsed by Queen Anne, who was eager to ‘bring religion to the godless masses of London’. It is located on Cannon Street Road, between The Highway and Cable Street, in the East End of London. Striking in profile, the white-stoned church projects the usual power and spatial ambiguity characteristic of a Hawksmoor church. With its extraordinary lantern tower and four distinctive ‘pepperpot’ turrets, it casts a powerful silhouette more in keeping with a fortress battlement than a typical Christian place of worship. The lantern is composed of eight supporting columns, each surmounted by a Roman altar design, a favourite theme of Hawksmoor that he also employed at St John Horsleydown.
During a bombing raid on London’s docklands during the Blitz of May 1941, St George-in-the-East was set on fire by a Luftwaffe bomb. The interior of the church was gutted, but the tower, walls and distinctive ‘pepperpot’ turrets survived. The roofless ruin was restored in the 1960’s.
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The Site of St John Horsleydown
St John Horsleydown was built between 1727 and 1733 near the south bank of the River Thames in Fair Street (now known as Tower Bridge Road, just south of the junction with Tooley Street). The church was built as one of the last churches of the Commission for Building Fifty New Churches set up by an Act of Parliament in 1710.
The church’s design was a joint effort between two architects: John James designed a simple square church body, to which Hawksmoor added an unusual spire. Hawksmoor’s steeple took the form of a tapered column, making it look much taller than it actually was, and topped by a weathervane depicting a flaming comet.
The church was severely damaged by a bomb on 20 September 1940 during the London Blitz, but parts of the building remained in use for years afterwards. The church eventually closed in 1968, and the London City Mission (a Christian outreach programme) bought the site from the Church Commissioners in 1974 for £37,811. The church’s crypt was emptied of its dead and the bodies moved to Brookwood Cemetery and Naismith House.
Redevelopment of the site by the London City Mission quickly followed. Interestingly, the Mission’s modern red-brick headquarters was built directly on the stone foundations of the original Hawksmoor church.
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Christchurch, Spitalfields
Christchurch was built as part of the Fifty New Churches Act of 1710. It is considered by many to be Nicholas Hawksmoor’s architectural masterpiece. Built between 1714 and 1729, its bone-white exterior once dominated the landscape but is now somewhat hidden by the chrome and steel of London’s financial district. Like many of Hawksmoor’s London churches, it possesses a strange, overpowering quality that echoes power, both temporal and otherworldly.
The church site has a dark and grisly past. No area of London was ravaged more by the effects of the plague than the surrounding parishes of Aldgate and Whitechapel. In an attempt to dispose of the bodies, huge pits were dug, into which thousands of unfortunate victims were thrown. Hawksmoor’s church was built on one such plague pit.
Christchurch’s association with death continued into the 19th century, as the dark streets around the church turned into the killing fields of Jack the Ripper. In 1888, five women, all prostitutes, were horrifically murdered in close vicinity to Christchurch. Police witnesses often established the time of events with reference to the well-illuminated church clock.
Christchurch fell into disrepair. By 1960, it was nearly derelict with services held in the church hall because the roof was declared unsafe. In 1976, an independent charity was formed to restore the building and bring it back to use.
As part of the restoration efforts, the church’s burial vaults were cleared. Between 1984 and 1986, nearly 1,000 bodies were removed from the labyrinth of interconnecting tunnels and cellars beneath the church. At the time, there were serious fears that some of the sealed coffins in the crypt might contain people who had died of bubonic plague or smallpox.
The site was immediately closed down when the exhumed body of a man clearly displayed the physical signs of smallpox. The vault was sealed for 6 months whilst the body was tested in an American laboratory. The results of the analysis confirmed the smallpox virus was dead and did not present a risk.
* * *
St Mary Woolnoth
Wedged into a triangle formed by the junction of Lombard Street and King William Street stands the remarkable church of St Mary Woolnoth. The site has been a place of worship for over two thousand years, and the present church stands on the site of a Roman Temple dedicated to the Roman goddess Concordia. The current Christian church is at least the third to have been built on the site. A church dating back to 1445 was badly damaged during the Great Fire of London of 1666 and was completely rebuilt by Nicholas Hawksmoor between 1719 and 1727.
Famed for its fortress-like double-towered facade and spatial ambiguities, it has a strange, almost threatening, appearance. The church’s external dimensions emphasise the downward pressure of gravity, as opposed to architecture that reaches up to the celestial skies. Christian iconography is noticeably absent on the exterior of the building.
The interior of Hawksmoor’s St Mary Woolnoth is based on the motif of a perfect cube, a very unusual design device for a Christian church. Several c
ommentators have connected the form of the church with that of the cubic stone or ‘perfect ashlar’, a central symbol in speculative Freemasonry.
St Mary Woolnoth is also unique because it has an underground station beneath it. The construction of Bank Station between 1897 and 1900 required the clearing of the church’s subterranean vaults and the transfer of its interred dead bodies to a cemetery in Ilford. The lift shafts and staircase shaft for the station are built directly beneath the church floor.
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The Pyramid at St Anne’s Limehouse
St Anne’s Limehouse was designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor as one of twelve churches built to serve the needs of the rapidly expanding population of London in the 18th century. The building was completed in 1727 and consecrated in 1730.
Standing in the graveyard of St Anne’s is a bizarre four-sided pyramid of Portland stone. Each face of the pyramid is divided into five panels. The top panel of one of the sides is inscribed with the words ‘The Wisdom of Solomon’ and under it is carved a raised but highly worn coat of arms. Some early commentaries concerning the pyramid also state that under the coat of arms were carved a number of Hebrew words, but these have since been lost due to weathering.
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The Minories
The name refers to the area formerly housing the Abbey of the Minoresses of St Mary of the Order of St Clare, founded by Edmund Crouchback in 1293. (At the time, the nuns were known as Minoresses.) Today a small side-road off the Minories is still named St Clare Street.
In September 2013, the Minories was the site of a magnificent Roman discovery. During the last few hours of an archaeological dig in the foundations for a new 16-floor hotel, a 1st-century-AD stone Roman eagle was unearthed. Described by archaeologists as one of the best examples of Romano-British sculpture in existence, the two-foot-high carved stone monument portrays a powerful eagle with a writhing serpent in its beak. The statue is made from Cotswold limestone and is believed to symbolise the struggle between good and evil. Unusually the snake is depicted as having a row of sharp teeth.
The only other example of the eagle and serpent motif from the Roman Empire was found in Jordan in 1937 and is now in the Cincinnati Art Museum, US. The eagle found in the Minories is thought to have been an adornment to an imposing mausoleum, as a Roman burial ground existed there, just outside the City walls.
* * *
Prehistoric London
The square mile known today as the ‘City of London’ contains millennia of human history buried within its soil. In this area once stood a fortified enclosure. The enclosure (or ‘Caer’) was arranged around two hillocks about 35 feet high and positioned either side of a stream. Today, the present street named Walbrook runs very close to the course of the stream. To the north was a swampy moorland stretching to the foot of an immense forest that was later known as the Middlesex Forest. Parts of this ancient forest still remain at Hampstead, Epping and Hainault.
According to legend, on the western hillock, at the location of the present St Paul’s Cathedral, stood a mighty stone circle of unhewn monoliths. The Druidic circle, the seat of the Archdruid, links the site of the nation’s most important Christian church to a pagan religion stretching back thousands of years. The stone circle has long gone, and no trace has ever been found, apart from perhaps the remains of a single stone pillar, called the ‘London Stone’. The stone once stood in the middle of Cannon Street. A second Druidic circle is rumoured to have stood where Westminster Abbey now stands.
Menhirs, or large isolated standing stones, are commonly found in connection with many British circles. Perhaps the best known is Stonehenge’s ‘Hele’ (from the Greek helios for ‘sun’) or Sunstone. The name of Christopher Wren is expertly chiselled into one of the 40-tonne sarsen stones that make up the prehistoric stone circle of Stonehenge.
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The London Stone
This unassuming block of Clipsham limestone can be viewed through an ugly iron grille incorporated into the front of a sportswear shop on Cannon Street. Known as the London Stone (or Brutus Stone), it measures only 53 cm wide, 43 cm high, and 30 cm front to back. But contrary to its small physical size and rather incongruous setting, it is an important relic of London’s long history. According to a medieval saying, ‘So long as the stone of Brutus is safe, so long shall London flourish’.
No one knows for sure where it came from and how it became so important in the folklore of London, but it is likely that this mysterious lump of masonry has been in the city from at least 1198 and probably for significantly longer. The object that remains today is just a fragment of the original much larger stone, which stood taller than a man.
Those seeking esoteric knowledge have always been drawn to the London Stone and its mystical aura. Dr John Dee, mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, occult philosopher, and adviser to Elizabeth I, was beguiled by the object. According to legend, Dee hacked off a piece of the stone for his own personal experimentation. In his poem ‘To the Jews’, William Blake postulated that it was a sacrificial stone for Druidic worship.
* * *
Ratcliffe Highway Murders
By the turn of the 19th century, the Ratcliffe Highway, which led east from the Tower of London through the district of Shadwell, had acquired a legendary reputation as a centre of criminal activity. Now simply known as ‘The Highway’, it was a principal traffic artery in and out of the city. A series of shocking murders along The Highway in 1811 sealed its place in infamy.
Around midnight on the evening of 7 October 1811, a man entered a draper’s shop on Ratcliffe Highway and murdered the shop owner, Timothy Marr, his wife Celia, their 14-week-old son, and the shop boy. The nature of the frenzied attack was unprecedented and shook London to its core: Marr and his wife were battered to death with a heavy maul and slashed with a ripping chisel; the skull of their young apprentice was cracked open and its contents smeared about the walls; the head of Marr’s son was almost completely severed from his body. As the four victims were buried beneath a monument at St George-in-the-East, panic spread across London like wildfire.
Twelve days later, another grisly killing spree erupted in the neighbourhood and bore a striking resemblance to the first: skulls smashed in and throats cut through to the bone. These horrific murders took place at the King’s Arms public house on Gravel Pit Lane, which ran from Ratcliffe Highway down to the nearby River Thames. The landlord, John Williamson; his wife, Elizabeth; and a barmaid, Bridget Harrington, were all found slain after the crazed attack.
Shortly afterwards, a 27-year-old sailor named John Williams was arrested and imprisoned at Coldbath Fields. The night before his trial, he was found hanging in his cell
Extraordinarily and to satisfy the public’s concerns, the Home Secretary ordered Williams’s body to be paraded through the streets on an open cart. As the cart passed the second murder site, the coachman stopped the procession and whipped Williams three times across the face. Finally, the crowd passed by the church of St George-in-the-East to a hole dug at the crossroads between New Road (now Commercial Road) and Canon Street Road. Williams’s corpse was bundled into the makeshift grave, and hundreds watched as his body was decapitated and a wooden stake hammered into his heart.
* * *
The Ripper Murders
Between August and November 1888, five brutal murders took place in a one-square-mile area of Whitechapel in London. All the victims were prostitutes, and all, except for one—Elizabeth Stride—were horrifically mutilated.
The ghastly crimes of Jack the Ripper (also known as the Whitechapel Murderer or ‘Leather Apron’) around a specific area of London’s impoverished East End have gripped the world’s attention for over a century. The identity and motivations of England’s most notorious serial killer still remain a mystery.
Much has been written about the horrific scenes that met the police on those dark nights in 1888. A number of small but possibly significant details surrounding the case have been far less reported. Doe
s a further examination of these items shed light on the shocking intent of the unknown killer that terrorised London in 1888?
The first four victims were killed at the four points of a cross.
The murders took place within one square mile, whereas most serial killers cover a much wider geographical area.
All victims (apart from Mary Jane Kelly) were left on public display, whereas most serial killers conceal their victims.
Coins were placed by Annie Chapman’s body.
Two brass rings were taken from Annie Chapman’s hand during her attack.
* * *
Crossbones Graveyard
Close to the popular tourist landmarks of the Shard, Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre and Southwark Cathedral lies a tiny piece of wasteland, tucked away at the junction of Redcross Way and Union Street. This piece of land now used as a storage yard hides a tragic secret. Under the tarmac lie the bodies of over 15,000 people.
The prostitutes that worked in the area were refused burial in consecrated ground due to their sinful profession and were found land away from the local parish church, which became known as Crossbones Graveyard. The graveyard was also the final resting place for many of London’s paupers and outcasts. It was finally closed down in 1853 due to lack of space and the large number of bodies being buried there.
Today a memorial gate can be found at the site of the graveyard (opposite the Boot and Flogger pub), where people pay their respects to London’s outcast and forgotten dead. As a makeshift tribute, countless ribbons and trinkets have been tied to the gate, and a small memorial service is held there monthly.
The Devil’s Architect: Book Two of the Dark Horizon Trilogy Page 25