1

Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812 - 1852) was the English architect who paved the way for the revival of the Gothic style in religious architecture, especially in its connection to British Catholicism. A precocious talent (he designed the new furniture for Windsor Castle at fifteen), Pugin discovered his vocation thanks to his father, who had been among the first architectural illustrators in Britain (i.e. he had worked with the likes of Thomas Sandby and John Nash and illustrated Rudolph Ackermann’s Microcosm of London). A relentless worker who travelled Europe extensively to understand the original nature of Gothic, Pugin managed to reshape the architectural character of Victorian Britain from Scarisbrick Hall, Lancashire, to St. Giles’, Cheadle; his early death, however, did not allow him to see the completion of his most important commission, namely the design of the interior of the new Palace of Westminster and its clock tower, usually referred to incorrectly as ‘Big Ben’ (this being the name of the bell and not that of the tower itself, renamed in 2012 as ‘Elizabeth Tower’). This letter, addressed to ‘Mr Hull’ at 109 Wardour Street, was written in 1841 from Ramsgate, his beloved aunt Selina’s town where in a few years he would build the Grange, his characteristic family home. Pugin’s friendship with the London broker Edward Hull had started in 1827, when the Soho area swarmed with antiquities shops. His reference to the fact that he is enjoying his new work may be related to his major book The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture (1841), where he expressed the idea that function and shape must work in harmony in architecture.

Pugin, Augustus Welby Northmore, 1812-1852 (sender)

1841 March 5

2 sheets

manuscript

paper

eng

autographs (manuscripts)
letters (correspondence)

1841

KSH

Archive

DAA-9.13