Skip to main content

From the Shadows: The Architecture and Afterlife of Nicholas Hawksmoor

£5 plus booking fee (Advance tickets)
Wednesday 14 September 2016
7.30pm
Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL
Tube: Holborn

Directions
Facebook event page

Nicholas Hawksmoor (1662–1736) is considered one of Britain’s greatest architects. He was involved in the grandest architectural projects of his age and today is best known for his London churches – six idiosyncratic edifices of white Portland stone that remain standing today, proud and tall in the otherwise radically changed cityscape.

After centuries of neglect Hawksmoor began to return to prominence during the 1960s and 1970s. At the same time, a mythology began to develop around him and his work. Iain Sinclair posited a magical "system of energies, or unit of connection, within the city," in Hawksmoor’s churches in Lud Heat (1975), while Peter Ackroyd popularised the association of Hawksmoor’s work with the occult in his novel Hawksmoor (1985).

Latterly, psycho-geographers, Alan Moore and others have continued the myth of Hawksmoor as an undercover pagan architect. In this talk, Owen Hopkins explores how and why this mythology has grown up around Hawksmoor and his work and how it relates to the real historical figure.

Owen Hopkins is a writer, historian and curator of architecture. He is Architecture Programme Curator at the Royal Academy of Arts and is author of four books on architecture, including From the Shadows: The Architecture and Afterlife of Nicholas Hawksmoor.

£5 plus booking fee (Advance tickets)
Wednesday 14 September 2016
7.30pm
Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL
Tube: Holborn.

Directions
Facebook event page

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Haunted Landscape: Witchcraft, Ritual and the Supernatural 2023

It’s getting darker. Join us at Conway Hal l as we explore the Haunted Landscape, our annual gathering of witchcraft, folklore, ghosts, and fairies from the British Isles. Speakers this year: Jamie Canton, Nigel Pennick, Dr. Helen Frisby, Kirsty Hartsiotis, Sandra Lawrence, Allyson Shaw, James Edward Frost, and Francis Young.  Live and online. The Spro Mine by Vlash on flickr Saturday 18 November 2023 Doors, books stall, and coffee from 9.30am. Talks 10 am - 5 pm. Lunch 1 pm-2 pm (ish) £25 / £18 concessions. £15 live stream. Advance tickets Conway Hall , 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL Tube: Holborn Directions A link to all live streams will be sent out to all online participants after booking.  London Fortean's Mailing List Facebook event page 10 am Allyson Shaw - Ashes and Stones: A Scottish Journey in Search of Witches and Witness.  A moving and personal journey, along rugged coasts and through remote villages and cities, in search of the traces of those accused of witchc
  *** TUBE STRIKE *** Although the tube strike has been called off, we'd already shifted the date of our next meeting at the Bell, Jeremy Harte speaking on Gypsies and the Supernatural , from Tuesday July 25 to Tuesday August 1 . Please note that we're sticking with this new date.

A New Demonology: John Keel and the Mothman Prophecies

  Tuesday 28 November 2023 A New Demonology: John Keel and the Mothman Prophecies     From the 1960s the “ultraterrestrial hypothesis” became a popular alternative to the ETH for UFOs and other fortean anomalies as a result of the writings of the American journalist John Keel (1930-2009). Keel’s theories are best known today via his 1975 book The Mothman Prophecies that chronicled an outbreak of weirdness in the Ohio Valley, USA, that included visits by a winged humanoid (the Mothman), Men-in-Black, UFOs and animal mutilations. His book had a Hollywood makeover in 2002 and the legend is now marked by an annual Mothman Festival in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. Dr David Clarke ’s talk is based on an extended interview with Keel during his visit to the UK in 1992 and the contents of his chapter “The Mothman of West Virginia: a case study in legendary storytelling” in The Contemporary Legend Casebook 2: North American Monsters (Utah University Press 2020). Date: Tuesday 28 November 20