Architecture · Gothic & the revivals
1812–1852 · English
Gothic Revival
Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin was the polemicist of the Gothic Revival, who argued that pointed or Christian architecture was not a style to be chosen but the only moral way to build. A convert to Catholicism at fifteen, he designed churches, furniture, wallpaper, metalwork, tiles and stained glass, and drew every Gothic detail of Charles Barry's new Palace of Westminster. He worked himself into collapse and died at forty, having done, as he said, a lifetime's work in that time.
A tall clock tower at the north end of a new Parliament, drawn in the architect's last weeks of sanity and called by him his final design (1852–1859)
Westminster, London
The Elizabeth Tower; he wrote to a friend that he had never worked so hard on 'that beautiful tower' and it was indeed his last design.
A small Staffordshire church paid for by an earl, its every inch stencilled, gilded and tiled — its architect called it perfect (1841–1846)
Cheadle, Staffordshire
St Giles', Cheadle, built for the 16th Earl of Shrewsbury; the architect wrote 'Cheadle, Cheadle, Cheadle, my consolation in all afflictions'.
The first Catholic cathedral built in England since the Reformation, a brick hall church with twin west spires (1839–1841)
Birmingham, England
St Chad's, Birmingham, consecrated in 1841 and raised to cathedral status in 1852.
A seaside house the architect built for himself on a cliff top, with a sea-watching tower and a private church next door (1843–1844)
Ramsgate, Kent
The Grange; from its tower he watched for wrecks in the Goodwin Sands and launched his own lugger.
A flint church built at his own expense beside his house, where he is buried in the family chantry (1845–1852)
Ramsgate, Kent
St Augustine's, the only church he paid for himself and the one he considered his best.
A Lancashire hall rebuilt in the richest possible Gothic for an eccentric collector, its tower added after the architect's death by his son (1837–1845)
Lancashire, England
Scarisbrick Hall for Charles Scarisbrick; Edward Welby Pugin added the tower.
A Staffordshire seat for the Earls of Shrewsbury, whose chapel and banqueting hall he gothicised and whose grounds are now a theme park (1837–1852)
Staffordshire, England
Alton Towers, where he worked for both the 16th and 17th Earls of Shrewsbury.