In trying to understand how Hawksmoor used architectural forms in the west front of Christ Church, Spitalfields, with its very grand, projecting portico and dark shadows, and then the way that the tower is constructed in layers, ending in a tapered, slightly Egyptian spire at the top (Hawksmoor would have been very aware of John Greaves, Pyramidographia: or a description of the pyramids in Aegypt, London, 1646), I thought I would look up how it was described in eighteenth-century guidebooks (I used conscientiously to transcribe them in order to try to understand the way buildings were viewed and interpreted in the eighteenth century).

The answer is as follows:-

In 1755, it was described as follows in London in Miniature: Being a Concise and Comprehensive Description of the Cities of London and Westminster , London: C. Corbett, 1755, p.227: ‘In Spittle-fields there is a fine large substantial Church, entirely built of Free-stone’.

Six years later, there was a more detailed description in London and its Environs Described, London: R. and J. Dodsley, 1761, vol. 2, pp.125-126: ‘The foundation was laid in 1723, and it was finished in four years. The body of the church is solid and well-proportioned; it is ornamented with a Doric portico, to which there is a handsome ascent by a flight of steps; and upon these the Doric order arises supported on pedestals. The tower over these rises with arched windows and niches, and on its diminishing for the steeple, is supported by the heads of the under corner, which form a kind of buttresse: from this part rises the base of the spire, with an arcade; its corners are in the same manner supported with a kind of pyramidal buttresse ending in a point, and the spire is terminated by a point and fane. This is the character of this edifice given in the English Architect: who asserts that solidity without weight is its character, and that though this structure is not without faults, it is worthy of great praise’ (I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the transcription because my handwriting wasn’t very legible even forty years ago).

What the latter description shows is that contemporaries (or near contemporaries) perfectly appreciated the games that Hawksmoor was able to play with the language of architecture and took pleasure in describing the way in which the eye moves up the different layers of the west front up towards the spire (I assume that the reference to The English Architect is to the publication of ENGLISH ARCHITECTURE: Or, The Publick Buildings Of London and Westminster which had appeared in 1758).

Please excuse the pedantry !