Penance

It's entirely possible that I've been too absolute when stating my dislike of the English Baroque, so I thought I ought to make amends by paying homage to one example I like very much. This is St Mary Woolnoth in the heart of the City of London:


Nicholas Hawksmoor's only church actually in The City (though Christ's Church Spitalfields comes pretty close), this one was opened in 1716.


The site is tiny and difficult: Hawksmoor built a perfect cube for the church itself (Wren had done something similar at St Stephen Walbrook, for example), and on the front he designed an extraordinary blank tower.


Corinthian columns first appear here, and they're used extensively inside, too.


As are Baroque cherub/angel things (maybe a clue as to why I find the Baroque a bit sickly-sweet):


But there's also rather feisty ironwork:


Inside, almost the first thing you notice (after the sense of light) is the columns:


Columns dominate this space -- not in a way that makes it feel cramped, but that somehow force you to have an intense sense of the soaring vertical.


Even the wooden pilasters on the side walls contribute (and are testimony to insane levels of skill in wood carving):


Then you notice those fat cherub things again, this time in gold, glimmering and shining:


In fact, the whole altar surround thing (is that a reredos?) magnifies the effect, by using gold leaf against black wood.


The pews are much simpler and more to my usual taste, along with that rather nice tiled floor.


In case you hadn't realised, I'm actually a huge fan of this piece of architecture. My enthusiasm for it cancels out my sniffiness about the English Baroque generally (and don't get me started on the even more elaborate Baroque that emerged on mainland Europe).


Even here, I think the exterior is more successful than the interior (although we ought not to judge too firmly -- Hawksmoor built 1st floor galleries around the church that were removed in the nineteenth century, so it's difficult to get a feel for exactly how it was intended to be).


But that muscular massing of stone and ironwork...


That Hawksmoor knew how to make a statement, even on such a modest, hemmed-in site as this.