Nicholas Hawksmoor (probably 1661 – 25 March 1736) 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, 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.

Life

Hawksmoor was born in Nottinghamshire in 1661, into a yeoman farming family, almost certainly in East Drayton or Ragnall, Nottinghamshire. On his death he was to leave property at nearby Ragnall, Dunham and a house and land at Great Drayton. It is not known where he received his schooling, but it was probably in more than basic literacy. George Vertue, whose family had property in Hawksmoor's part of Nottinghamshire, wrote in 1731 that he was taken as a youth to act as clerk by "Justice Mellust in Yorkshire, where Mr Gouge senior did some fretwork ceilings afterwards Mr. Haukesmore [sic] came to London, became clerk to Sr. Christopher Wren & thence became an Architect".

Hawksmoor is a British steakhouse and cocktail bar. The original establishment is in Spitalfields, near to where the architect Nicholas Hawksmoor built Christ Church. Subsequently there are four other restaurants in London: in Seven Dials, Air Street nearby Piccadilly Circus, Knightsbridge and Guildhall district of the City. Most recently they have opened their first restaurant outside London: Hawksmoor Manchester on Deansgate (near Spinningfields).

Development

The restaurant was founded by Will Beckett and Huw Gott in 2006. They had previously worked in bars and kitchens in London's East End and opened their new bar/restaurant on the Commercial Road there. Their plan was to offer high-quality, well-butchered beef and so they tasted the meat of a variety of breeds and suppliers before choosing the longhorn cattle bred and butchered in Yorkshire by Tim Wilson's Ginger Pig company.

Their second branch in Seven Dials was opened in 2010. This was especially successful and the turnover of their company, Underdog, increased from £4 million to £11 million.

Hawksmoor is a 1985 novel by the English writer Peter Ackroyd. It won Best Novel at the 1985 Whitbread Awards and the Guardian Fiction Prize. It tells the parallel stories of Nicholas Dyer, who builds seven churches in 18th-century London for which he needs human sacrifices, and Nicholas Hawksmoor, detective in the 1980s, who investigates murders committed in the same churches.Hawksmoor has been praised as Peter Ackroyd's best novel up to now and an example of postmodernism.

Story

Set in the early 18th century, architect Nicholas Dyer is progressing work on several churches in London's East End. He is, however, involved in Satanic practices (something inculcated in him as an orphan), a fact which he must keep secret from all his associates, including his supervisor Sir Christopher Wren. This is all the more challenging since he indulges in human sacrifice as part of the construction of the buildings. Dyer's simmering contempt for Wren is brought closest to the surface in discussions they have concerning rationalism versus Dyer's own carefully disguised brand of mysticism.