St George's Bloomsbury: Hawksmoor's Stepped Pyramid and King George
Why is it significant?
Stand on the pavement of Bloomsbury Way and look up at one of the strangest and most theatrical church steeples in the world.
Key Facts
| Place | St George's Bloomsbury: Hawksmoor's Stepped Pyramid and King George |
|---|---|
| Address | Bloomsbury Way, London WC1A 2HR, United Kingdom |
| Geo Coordinates | 51.51860, -0.12320 |
| Part of Walk | Literary Bloomsbury & The British Museum: Rosetta Stone to Virginia Woolf |
| Generated | Generated |
Stand on the pavement of Bloomsbury Way and look up at one of the strangest and most theatrical church steeples in the world. Above a classical Roman temple portico rises not a conventional Christian spire, but a stepped stone pyramid guarded by climbing carved stone lions and unicorns, topped by a statue of King George the First dressed in a Roman toga.
Completed in seventeen thirty by Nicholas Hawksmoor, the most visionary genius of English Baroque, the tower was directly inspired by Pliny the Elder's ancient description of the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
William Hogarth featured this eccentric steeple in the background of his famous seventeen fifty-one satirical engraving Gin Lane, which depicted the drunken squalor and ruin of the surrounding St Giles slums.
Stroll down through High Holborn toward Lincoln's Inn Fields and Sir John Soane's miraculous architectural museum.