St George's, Bloomsbury

Random things from my cycle around London in this glorious weather.

So, this is a picture of a church, which I imagine you have already guessed. It is St George’s, Bloomsbury and known as a Hawksmoor Church, on account of the fact it was designed by a leading architect of the time Nicholas Hawksmoor. He was in operation mainly in the early 1700’s, was a pupil of Christopher Wren who built tons of stuff including St Paul’s Cathedral and in fact worked a lot with Wren on that church. Hawksmoor also built the two big towers at the front of Westminster Abbey, the ones you always see on the TV whenever the Queen goes in, or a royal wedding takes place etc.

Hawksmoor built in the fashionable Baroque style, a style that is typified by curves, theatricality and drama. He is best known for creating six churches, aka the Hawksmoor Churches. St Anne’s, Limehouse was one I talked about in an earlier post.

What I like particularly like about St Georges is the spire you can see on the left of the picture. He based the design of this on the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, one of the seven wonders of the Ancient World. Based in modern day Bodrum in Turkey, this Mausoleum was a huge, massive structure nearly 150 ft tall, adorned with loads of spectacular statues and built for a governor at the time called Mausolus (he’s actually the guy that gives us the name Mausoleum). You can still see some of the remains of this ancient wonder in the British Museum, which is just around the corner.

Again, one of those things you don’t normally see when the city is in full flow as you don’t tend to look up. Although you may have visited down below in the crypt, as the Museum of Comedy is based there. Not open right now, obviously, but when it does, loads of great stuff to check out in there as well as catch some awesome gigs.