St George’s, Bloomsbury
Feb 09, 2022
2 minutes
by Nicholas Hawksmoor
Jack Watkins
IT may seem a contrarian’s choice to pick St George’s, Bloomsbury, London W1, as Nicholas Hawksmoor’s masterpiece ahead of his East End wonder, Christ Church, Spitalfields. The latter, the subject of a high-profile conservation campaign in the 1980s, has been variously described by architectural writers as ‘the grandest’, ‘most stirring’ or ‘stupendous’ of Hawksmoor’s creations.
In fact, each of the six churches, has written: ‘Colossal in scale, of brilliant white stone, stark and austere in design yet resonant with allusions to architecture distant in time and place, these churches still dominate their areas even as the city has grown around them.’
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