The Commission for Building Fifty New Churches (in London and the surroundings) was an organisation set up by Act of Parliament in England in 1711, the New Churches in London and Westminster Act 1710, with the purpose of building fifty new churches for the rapidly growing conurbation of London. It did not achieve its target, but did build a number of churches, which would become known as the Queen Anne Churches.
Most of the churches were designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor, with John James, Thomas Archer and James Gibbs also participating.
The Commission partly funded rebuilding of five churches: St George Gravesend, St George the Martyr Southwark, St Giles in the Fields, St Mary Magdalen Woolwich and St Michael, Cornhill. It bought and altered St George the Martyr Holborn and bought St John Clerkenwell.
The Commission was funded by a duty on coal coming into London. [1] This tax was originally levied in 1670 to pay for the rebuilding of St Paul's Cathedral and City churches destroyed in the Great Fire of London. When the Commission was set up the duty was assigned to it. In 1718 the duty became part of general government revenues but was still used to fund the Commissioners' work.
Nicholas Hawksmoor was an English architect. He was a leading figure of the English Baroque style of architecture in the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries. Hawksmoor worked alongside the principal architects of the time, Christopher Wren and John Vanbrugh, and contributed to the design of some of the most notable buildings of the period, including St Paul's Cathedral, Wren's City of London churches, Greenwich Hospital, Blenheim Palace and Castle Howard. Part of his work has been correctly attributed to him only relatively recently, and his influence has reached several poets and authors of the twentieth century.
John James was a British architect particularly associated with Twickenham in west London, where he rebuilt St Mary's Church and also built a house for James Johnson, Secretary of State for Scotland, later Orleans House and since demolished. Howard Colvin's assessment of him was that of "a competent architect, but he lacked inventive fancy, and his buildings are for the most part plain and unadventurous in design".
St John's Smith Square is a redundant church in the centre of Smith Square, Westminster, London. Sold to a charitable trust as a ruin following firebombing in the Second World War, it was restored as a concert hall.
St Mary Woolnoth is an Anglican church in the City of London, located on the corner of Lombard Street and King William Street near Bank junction. The present building is one of the Queen Anne Churches, designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor. The parish church continues to be actively used for services, with Holy Communion every Tuesday. St Mary Woolnoth lies in the ward of Langbourn.
George Clarke, of All Souls, Oxford, was an English architect, print collector and Tory politician who sat in the English and British House of Commons between 1702 and 1736.
St George's, Bloomsbury, is a parish church in Bloomsbury, London Borough of Camden, United Kingdom. It was designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor and consecrated in 1730. The church crypt houses the Museum of Comedy.
James Gibbs was one of Britain's most influential architects. Born in Aberdeen, he trained as an architect in Rome, and practised mainly in England. He is an important figure whose work spanned the transition between English Baroque architecture and Georgian architecture heavily influenced by Andrea Palladio. Among his most important works are St Martin-in-the-Fields, the cylindrical, domed Radcliffe Camera at Oxford University, and the Senate House at Cambridge University.
Thomas Archer (1668–1743) was an English Baroque architect. His buildings are important as the only ones by an English Baroque architect to show evidence of study of contemporary continental, namely Italian, architecture.
The year 1711 in architecture involved some significant events.
The year 1730 in architecture involved some significant events.
Robert Wilks was a British actor and theatrical manager who was one of the leading managers of Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in its heyday of the 1710s. He was, with Colley Cibber and Thomas Doggett, one of the "triumvirate" of actor-managers that was denounced by Alexander Pope and caricatured by William Hogarth as leaders of the decline in theatrical standards and degradation of the stage's literary tradition.
English Baroque is a term used to refer to modes of English architecture that paralleled Baroque architecture in continental Europe between the Great Fire of London (1666) and roughly 1720, when the flamboyant and dramatic qualities of Baroque art were abandoned in favour of the more chaste, rule-based neo-classical forms espoused by the proponents of Palladianism.
George Henry Lee I, 2nd Earl of Lichfield (1690–1743) was a younger son of Edward Henry Lee, 1st Earl of Lichfield and his wife Charlotte Fitzroy, an illegitimate daughter of Charles II by his mistress, the celebrated courtesan Barbara Villiers. On 14 July 1716 George Henry Lee succeeded his father as the 2nd Earl of Lichfield.
Edward Stanton (1681–1734) was an English stonemason, builder and sculptor.
Johann Baptist Zimmermann was a German painter and a prime stucco plasterer during the Baroque.
Francis Bird (1667–1731) was one of the leading English sculptors of his time. He is mainly remembered for sculptures in Westminster Abbey and St Paul's Cathedral. He carved a tomb for the dramatist William Congreve in Westminster Abbey and sculptures of the apostles and evangelists on the exterior of St Paul's, a memorial to William Hewer in the interior of St Paul's Church, Clapham as well as the statue of Henry VI in School Yard, Eton College. Despite his success, later in life Bird did little sculpting. He had inherited money from his father-in-law and set up a marble import business.
St John Horsleydown was the Anglican parish church of Horsleydown in Bermondsey, South London. Built for the Commission for Building Fifty New Churches to the designs of Nicholas Hawksmoor and John James in 1726–1733, it was noted for its distinctive spire in the form of a tapering column.
John Thomas was an English bishop.
William Townesend of Oxford (1676–1739) was a 17th/ 18th century British sculptor, architect and builder associated with several important British buildings.
