And now we come to the Heart of our Désigne: the art of Shaddowes you must know well, Walter, and you must be instructed how to Cast them with due Care. It is only the Darknesse that can give trew Formed to our Work and trew Perspective to our Fabrick, for there is no Light without Darknesse and no Substance without Shaddowe (and I turn this Thought over in my Mind: what Life is there which is not a Portmanteau of Shaddowes and Chimeras?). I build in the Day to bring News of the Night and of Sorrowe, I continued, and then I broke off for Walter’s sake: No more of this now, I said, it is by the by. But you’ll oblige me, Walter, to draw the Front pritty exact, this being for the Engraver to work from. And work trewe to my Design: that which is to last one thousand years is not to be praecipitated.
— Hawksmoor, Peter Ackroyd,1985
I am not sure which Hawksmoor I prefer, the genial autodidact of architectural history or the dark magus of Ackroyd’s seminal post-modern horror novel.
I took these photos on my first visit ever to the ground of Christ Church (built 1714-1729, interior & exterior restored 2004, crypt restored 2015), after so many years of reading about it and Hawksmoor’s other works.
I’ve written elsewhere about the mysterious appearance of Hawksmoor’s London Churches: Architecture & Theology by Pierre de la Ruffinière du Prey (2000) on my desk while I was a student at Yale School of Architecture in 2001, somewhat before the “peak Hawksmoor” period. Another one of those uncanny “Gothic” coincidences that seem to have shaped my life’s course!
In 2014, I finally read Peter Ackroyd’s book after discovering the title in a list of David Bowie’s favorite novels! And I was shocked to discover therein a pivotal scene that featured the unexpected and uncanny appearance of a book (the 18th-century architect’s journal) in the apartment of the 20th-century police detective investigating the murders around the architect’s churches.
I think the uncanniness is there, whoever the real Hawksmoor actually was, and these photos certainly seem to pick up on it. Of course, people have pointed out that most of my photos look like they were taken in another, darker world, so it could be just par for the course.
I also think, despite being a quite-lapsed Anglican-Episcopalian, that I would like to have a rockstar-type T-shirt featuring the facade of Christ Church.
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