Nicholas Hawksmoor

For when I trace back the years I have liv’d, gathering them up in my Memory…

Nichoas Hawksmoor's Christchurch Spitalfields, Spitalfields, Tower Hamlets, E1

… I see what a chequer’d Work Of Nature my life has been.

Nicholas Hawksmoor's St Mary Woolnoth, Lombard Street, City of London, EC3V

If I were now to inscribe my own History with its unparalleled Sufferings and surprizing Adventures (as the Booksellers might indite it)…

Nicholas Hawksmoor's St Anne's Limehouse, Limehouse, Tower Hamlets, E14

… I know that the great Part of the World would not believe the Passages there related, by reason of the Strangeness of them…

Nicholas Hawksmoor's St George-in-the-East, Shadwell, Tower Hamlets, E1

… but I cannot help their Unbelief…

Nicholas Hawksmoor's St George's Bloomsbury, Little Russell Street, Camden, WC1A

… and if the Reader considers them to be but dark Conceits, then let him bethink himself that Humane life is quite out of the Light and that we are all Creatures of Darknesse.

Nicholas Hawksmoor's St Alfege, St Alfege Passage, Greenwich, SE10

From Peter Ackroyd’s Hawksmoor (1985)

Ground For a Palace

When I was a King and a Mason – a Master proven and skilled,

Crystal Palace Park, Crystal Palace, Bromley, SE19

I cleared me ground for a Palace such as a King should build.

Crystal Palace Park, Crystal Palace, Bromley, SE19

I decreed and dug down to my levels. Presently, under the silt,

Crystal Palace Park, Crystal Palace, Bromley, SE19

I came on the wreck of a Palace such as a King had built.

Crystal Palace Park, Crystal Palace, Bromley, SE19

There was no worth in the fashion – there was no wit in the plan,

Crystal Palace Park, Crystal Palace, Bromley, SE19

Hither and thither, aimless, the ruined footings ran -

Crystal Palace Park, Crystal Palace, Bromley, SE19

Masonry, brute, mishandled, but carven on every stone:

Crystal Palace Park, Crystal Palace, Bromley, SE19

“After me cometh a Builder. Tell him, I too have known.”

Crystal Palace Park, Crystal Palace, Bromley, SE19

From Rudyard Kipling’s The Palace (1925)