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Hawksmoor's Masterpiece Design Returned to Former GloryChrist Church Spitalfields, Nicholas Hawksmoor's English Baroque masterpiece and the main venue of London's Spitalfields festival, has reopened following a full-scale renovation.
The 18th-century church, often referred to as 'The St Pauls of the East End', is considered the masterpiece of its architect Nicholas Hawksmoor, an apprentice of Christopher Wren. Consecrated in 1729, Christ Church was one of the Fifty New Churches that Parliament ordered to be built in London, Westminster and their suburbs by an Act Parliament of 1711. The church is one of Britain's relatively few Baroque buildings.
However, during the early 20th-century the church, which had undergone a substantial redesign during the Victorian period in the then fashionable mock-Gothic style, fell into disuse. It was declared officially derelict in 1957.
Since then, there has been vigourous lobbying for its renovation - including by the late poet laureate John Betjeman, who declared that he would willingly 'go to the stake' to preserve the building.
In the 1970s, a group called the Friends of Christ Church Spitalfields managed to raise over £4m for the repair of the church's exterior, thereby saving it from demolition. In 1976 the building, still in a state of tragic disrepair, became the main venue for the first Spitalfields Festival, a role which
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14/9/2004 | Viewed 5,643 time(s)
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