A PowerPoint presentation by W. Bro Stan Marut SLGR PPrJGD (Middx) to Temple of Athene Lodge No 9541 on Monday 8th December 2025.
“The name of Nicholas Hawksmoor has an interest for us as he was a freemason and very much in at the beginning of the formation of Premier Grand Lodge. The title I have given to this talk will be explained later. Hawksmoor’s story has given me the opportunity not only to look at some of his architecture but to look at other aspects of the areas where his works stood and bring back to life, as it were, his enduring architecture which stood neglected at times, as well as some of his work which some may not know was his design. Hawksmoor after years of obscurity had a revival and even entered modern literary culture. This also extended to the refurbishment of some of his churches which will be familiar to us as part of the London landscape.
To put him into a time context he was born in 1661 which would put him before the Plague of London 1665 followed by the Great Fire of London in 1666. He is famous for the Christian churches he designed in the early 1700s as well as other architectural works shared with Sir Christpoher Wren and Sir John Vanbrugh.
Unlike portraits of that period which were with peruke, the image we have of Hawksmoor is a bust possibly in the style of a Roman Emperor?
This is the only image we have of Hawksmoor, which is housed at All Souls College, Oxford.
Hawksmoor was born in Nottinghamshire in 1661/1662 to a Yeoman farming family and had social status. Yeoman was below that of a Gentleman.
His first employment was working for a Doncaster Judge. It was here where he allegedly met a decorative plasterer, an Edward Gouge, who introduced him to Sir Christopher Wren. Hawksmoor worked as deputy to Wren since he arrived in London at the age of 18. It seems that Wren had recently become a widower and the young Nicholas who lived with Wren became a surrogate elder brother to his children. Wren was married twice and his second wife died in 1680 which would correspond with Hawksmoor’s residency. He assisted Wren the in work at the Chelsea Military Hospital, Greenwich Naval Hospital, Kensington Palace and the rebuilding of numerous City churches after the Great Fire. He had a close working relationship not only Wren but also with John Vanbrugh, with whom he had helped build the great country houses of Castle Howard and Blenheim Palace. I want to briefly outline the milieu into which the young Hawksmoor was thrust. His freemasonry came later in his life, and I will allude to that feature of his life a bit later in the presentation.
THE CLASSICAL INFLUENCE
It is worth looking at those classical influences which left a mark on his work and from which he drew his inspiration.
It must be mentioned that Hawksmoor never travelled outside of the country and relied on other’s descriptions of those monuments which formed the basis of his ideas together with his avid reading of accounts in the far off lands. Little would Hawksmoor know that more than a hundred years later figures from excavations at Halicarnassus in 1857 would be transported from what is now modern day Turkey to be exhibited in the British Museum a stone’s throw from his St George’s Bloomsbury Church. The actual mausoleum dates from around 350 BCE.
I then want in this talk to look particularly at some of those works which are attributed to him but equally give an indication of his contribution to Wren in London and to look at how communities in the neighbourhoods of Hawksmoor’s churches continued after he had died, and how his monuments have stood the test of time.
HAWKSMOOR COMES INTO HIS OWN
Hawksmoor had many other commissions which took him to different places in England where he collaborated with Sir John Vanbrugh. He came in to his own when he was appointed as Surveyor under the Fifty New Churches Act 1711. This Act was the brain child of Queen Anne a staunch Protestant. He participated in the planned building of these fifty churches which were part of the Acts of Settlement of Queen Anne who was the reigning Monarch at the time. The construction of fifty new churches was designed to erect, “imposing edifices which would tower over the homes of the working classes as a sign of the national religion”. The building of these new churches in Holborn, Stepney, Wapping and Spitalfields was motivated by a desire to put the established Church of England very much in the forefront in these areas, especially with the influx of new immigrants and the existence of a strong dissenting church (i.e., the non-conformists). The Act was ambitious for its part, and not all the churches were subsequently built. Originally funds had been available from the Coal Tax Acts of 1667 and 1670 ostensibly to fund the reconstruction of St Pauls’ Cathedral after the Great Fire, but this was after the new St Pauls had been built and there was a clamour to use any residual monies to build the fifty planned churches.
Only 12 were completed of which 6 are attributed to Hawksmoor.
Of the six churches I want to concentrate on three especially which still have a resonance today, especially Christchurch, Spitalfields and St George’s in the East. All these I have visited, and they have an additional masonic connection apart from Hawksmoor being the architect.
HAWKSMOOR AS FREEMASON
We see that it was shortly after the Act of Parliament laying out the plan for the fifty new churches that Hawksmoor made his mark. He was appointed a Commissioner along with others of note including Sir Christopher Wren and his son, Sir John Vanbrugh and a William Dickinson, who was also employed by Wren as a draughtsman. Wren advocated a modest approach to this new church building scheme which might be seen in his design of St James Piccadilly. It seems that Bevis Marks and St James’s have a similar design with a brick exterior and galleried interiors. As part of the new Commission Hawksmoor met Nathaniel Blackerby a prominent member of Premier Grand Lodge. Working closely together on the new Commission it would be natural to suppose that Blackerby made the necessary introductions. Nathaniel Blackerby (1688-1742), served as Clerk of the Patent, a mid-level official at the Exchequer, but also held other positions including Treasurer to the Commission for Building Fifty Churches, with Nicholas Hawksmoor (1662-1736), as we have seen, the Commission’s Principal Surveyor. They were jointly responsible for signing completion certificates, with Blackerby disbursing funds thereafter. Blackerby was a member of the Horn Tavern Lodge in New Palace Yard and also a member of Grand Lodge, serving as Grand Warden in 1727 and Deputy Grand Master in each of the following two years. Blackerby promoted freemasonry avidly and was also a London magistrate. In which capacity he was a colleague of magistrate and freemason William Cowper
William Cowper was Grand Secretary (1723-27), and later Deputy Grand Master, and was central to the foundation of Modern Speculative Freemasonry and the promotion of the 1723 Constitutions. He was probably responsible for the first four of the Ancient Charges read to a Master Elect before Installation. Hawksmoor no doubt mixed with the great and the mighty during those early years of Premier Grand Lodge. Indeed, his daughter Elizabeth married Nathaniel Blackerby.
HAWKSMOOR’S CHURCHES WERE IN MIDDLESEX
St George’s Bloomsbury was strictly a newly created parish as the well to do church going residents of Bloomsbury would have had to attend St Giles Church which is close to Tottenham Court Road underground and Charing Cross Road that we know today. In the early 18th century, it was not a nice place for the “upper crust” to have to tend with those of a lower social class especially when attending church on Sunday. This meant traversing the area known as the St Giles Rookery which was unpleasant for those of a higher social class. The parish of St. George, Bloomsbury was formed around the time the church was consecrated, which was January 28, 1730. The new parish was created from the ancient parish of St Giles-in-the-Fields to serve the developing Bloomsbury area. The Temple of Baalbek was very much a template for the classic style used by Hawksmoor on his Bloomsbury Church.
The new Parish of St George Bloomsbury was formed and the better off from the north part of Bloomsbury would no longer have to traverse the Rookery of St Giles which was notorious for being a depraved area with many unsavoury goings on which I alluded to a moment ago.
HAWKSMOOR AND THE ANCIENTS
I thought about it and having read Ric Berman’s books on the Ancients Grand Lodge which had its beginnings in the community of the so called Aspirational London Irish, it occurred to me that Hawksmoor’s Church would stand sentinel in this area. Although it was several years after Hawksmoor’s death, it is interesting to note that some of these London Irish who lived in the St Gile’s Rookery would become erstwhile members of a formative Ancients Grand Lodge. Ric Berman’s Book “Schism” highlights the early membership of the Ancients, and it is noteworthy that the majority of those who became joiners were ordinary Craftsmen and tradesmen. It is apparent that those who were members of the Premier Grand Lodge, later dubbed the Moderns by Laurence Dermott, were a different class of person. One wonders how Hawksmoor might have viewed this development when his Bloomsbury Church was built. He would have had no idea. I show a list below of some of the early members:
The apparent debauchery of the St Giles Rookery is given prominence in the famous print “Gin Lane” by William Hogarth painter and freemason. It is said he attended a Lodge meeting at the Hand and Apple Tree in Little Queen Street and was one of the first Brethren to be Raised to the 3rd Degree when it was introduced in 1725. It is probable that he knew Hawksmoor, albeit he was quite a bit younger. Gin Lane was completed as an etching in 1751 at the same time as the Ancients Grand Lodge was receiving candidates from the St Giles Rookery.
The Spire of St George’s, Bloomsbury portrays a pyramidal shape which we saw in the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus.
You can see where the influence comes from. However, Hawksmoor in his church design was maybe more preoccupied with his own classical ideas and less with any Christian representation. In Bloomsbury there is no cross emblazoned on the top of the spire, just the pyramid with a statue of King George 1. This design was not without criticism from the Church authorities.
As with all monuments there was an element of decay which set in, and the name of Hawksmoor had faded into a possible architectural oblivion. He had never been knighted and did not carry the cache as, say, of Wren or Vanbrugh. St Georges in particular needed major refurbishment to bring it back to life and substantial amount of money. Very fortunately the Church was included on the World Monuments Fund watch list after it had been placed on the English Heritage Register of Buildings at risk. Together with Hawksmoor’s Christchurch in Spitalfields it might have been demolished. Paul Mellon one of world’s greatest philanthropists became, along with the Heritage Lottery Fund, the major financial resource in the conservation of this famous church.
Anthony Trollope the author was baptised in St George’s and the Suffragette, Emily Wilding Davison who threw herself under the horse belonging to King George IV at the Epsom races had her memorial service there. Apparently, Emperor Haile Selassie attended a requiem service for fallen Ethiopian soldiers at St George’s Bloomsbury who had lost their lives during the Italian invasion of his country. The service took place in March 1937.
CHRISTCHURCH SPITALFIELDS
This was another Church under threat of demolition as it had become run down. It has its own unique story to tell. Hawksmoor’s architectural masterpiece is situated where the City of London meets the East End. We consider these Churches to be in our contemporary London setting. When constructed Spitalfields was in Middlesex, as, indeed, was St George’s Bloomsbury. At the time of building, Spitalfields was a place of religious and political dissent. Hawksmoor’s mighty white stone church was described as designed to sail, architectural guns blazing, into this harbour of discontent, stamping the authority of crown, Parliament and the Church of England It is not difficult to imagine how imposing this stupendous construction must have seemed.
Christchurch in the early 19th century was still an imposing edifice. Later the area around Spitalfields became predominantly Jewish as the Huguenot weavers made way for initially Dutch Jews and subsequently many from Eastern Europe and the “rag trade” as it became known. At one time there were about 40 synagogues. It is not difficult to see how Christ Church might have become an irrelevance within the neighbourhood of Spitalfields. There are surely histories which will document the decline of the church. I want to look next at how this particular church was saved from demolition in the not too distant past and briefly show the reference to Christchurch by Jack London the author of Call of the Wild and White Fang, which are well known books by him.
Jack London stayed in Spitalfields in 1902 and saw the desperate plight of the working classes. Maybe a misnomer as it should, perhaps, be the non-working classes. He wrote about his spell in London in a book entitled The People of the Abyss. London took many photos of his travels around the world, and I recreated a photo he had taken on the steps of the front entrance to Christchurch looking over towards what was Spitalfields Market.
This is one of his photographs taken at the time of his visit with homeless using benches to sleep. It appears that some things never change and one wonder what Hawksmoor might have thought about it. Moving on the Church then declined and it became a wreck. Because there were so few Christians living the area, said Trevor Huddleston the Bishop of Stepney, there was no need for a building of cathedral like proportions. Nevertheless, a group had been formed called Save Britain’s Heritage and a number of volunteers got together with the view to restoring the Church. Later there was huge financial support from English Heritage and the National Heritage Memorial Fund.
I want once again refer to the position of Ancients freemasonry and the area around Spitalfields.
Irish Weavers arrived in Spitalfields during the 1730s when Hawksmoor would still have been alive. The Irish Linen industry was in decline, and this saw a migration to where work was available. Severe famine in Ireland was also a trigger, and Ric Berman has said that that the Irish seeking work in the capital of the country which had been partly to blame for their poverty and reduced circumstances was ironic. Once again there was a presence in the area where a Hawksmoor Church was situated of men who would form part of the Ancients Grand Lodge albeit this was a few years after the death of Hawksmoor in 1750/51.
The last of Hawksmoor’s churches I will refer to here is St George’s in the East situated in Wapping on the Highway formerly known as the Ratcliffe Highway. This was the first of his churches that I visited some time ago. What I hadn’t understood at that time was the destruction of the Church in the second world war and being close to the London Docks it was no surprise. Of course, all the Churches I have described here all had their moments of neglect and destruction and it is perhaps fortuitous that they have been preserved for future generations. St George in the East was consecrated in July 1729 when the area was still semi-rural. However, immigration was rife and there were many dissenting conventicles as it has been described. St Georges was, therefore, meant to be an imposing edifice towering above the homes of the working classes.
In its own right it has a certain claim to fame in that the founder of the Methodist movement John Wesley preached at the church in 1738. It would be some years later that his nephew Samuel Wesley would be initiated into the Lodge of Antiquity, a Moderns Lodge in 1788. He would become Grand Organist of Premier Grand Lodge before 1812 and was the first Grand Organist of the new United Grand Lodge of England in 1813 a role in which he served in until 1818.
St Georges in the East had its own hinterland of nasty, small and beggarly cheap housing as it has been described. It was outside the legal jurisdiction of the City of London. We have to remember that all the Hawksmoor Churches I have described in full were Middlesex Churches in their own right and did not fall within the walls of the City of London. There were theatres, taverns and prostitution. By the mid-18th century, the Ratcliffe Highway had become a by word for criminality, poverty, fever and filth. Therefore, it is surprising that the area had those who would be Ancients Freemasons and mirror the rookery of St Giles to the west of the City.
Ric Berman also notes in his book “Schism The Battle that Forged Freemasonry” that there were Jewish Ancients members and included a certain Abraham Jacob, Abraham Ardizaif, Abraham Juers, Isaac Wolfe and a Mordechai Isaacs, although these were not all confirmed to the St George’s location.
During the second world war the church was extensively damaged and held services in a makeshift prefab within the shell of the church. This lasted for 17 years and if one visited today, one would never have guessed. Essentially, it is only the outer fabric that remains of Hawksmoor’s design.
One might now say that they recognise some of these churches but never gave them a second thought. Certainly, the Bloomsbury church may be familiar to freemasons who dine at the hotel next to St George’s without a further glance not realising that this was created by a freemason nearly 300 years ago. Equally, they may not know of Hawksmoor’s possible crowning glory which was finished after his death. Nicholas Hawksmoor, architect, was Surveyor of the Fabric at Westminster Abbey from 1723. His great contribution to the building is seen every year by millions of people. That is the west towers of Westminster Abbey.
He designed the upper sections of the west towers, which were completed after his death by his successor John James in 1745. The towers had been left unfinished in the medieval period, the northwest one being higher than the southwest. Hawksmoor continued the work of restoration begun under his predecessor as Surveyor, Sir Christopher Wren. The Portland stone towers rise to a height of 225 feet 4 inches. ( https://www.westminster-abbey.org/abbey-commemorations/commemorations/nicholas-hawksmoor)
Hawksmoor enjoyed a revival in terms of architectural interest as I have shown in the restoration of his churches in more recent times.
In my opening slide I used the phrase Terror and Magnificence. Most certainly we might see where the Magnificence comes into play. Terror alludes to the use of “pagan” symbols and his concept of the Basilica after the primitive Christians. His designs often included symbols, obelisks, pyramids, and imitation altars, leading some to speculate on hidden meanings within the architecture. A graphic novel called From Hell as the story of Jack the Ripper and the Whitechapel killings. One of the scenes in the novel is outside Christ Church with two of the protagonists discussing Hawksmoor and his architecture.
The story does not end here and there is additional speculation about the idea of “Hawksmoor and the Pentagrams” referring to the theory that Nicholas Hawksmoor’s London churches form a pentagram or geometric pattern when their locations are connected on a map. This concept was popularized by authors Peter Ackroyd and Iain Sinclair, who explored the hidden symbolism and occult connections within his architecture. While there is no definitive proof of a deliberate pentagram, it remains a fascinating aspect of the mythology surrounding the famed architect and his unique designs. The theory posits that the locations of Hawksmoor’s designed churches in London create a pentagram, a five-pointed star. This geometric arrangement is seen by some as a symbol of occult power or a sacred layout within the city.
There is a triangle formed between Christ Church, St George-in-the -East, and St Anne, Limehouse’ and that ‘St George, Bloomsbury, and St Alfege, Greenwich, make up the major pentacle star’.
Is this just happenstance, or is there a sinister undertone? Who knows but even if it is all balderdash, it keeps alive in another medium Hawksmoor and his legacy.”
