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St George's, Bloomsbury, London (World Monuments Fund)
St George's Bloomsbury London - World Monuments Fund Author:Colin Amery This fascinating book tells the story of the creation of Nicholas Hawksmoor's celebrated eighteenth-century London church, St George's, Bloomsbury, and its recent multi million-dollar restoration, underwritten by the World Monuments Fund in Britain and the Paul Mellon Fund for the Architectural Heritage of Great Britain. Commissioned by Parliame... more »nt in 1711 and completed in 1731, the church, best known from its depiction in Hogarth's 1751 engraving, "Gin Lane", has been hailed as a masterpiece of Late Baroque architecture and one of the finest churches in England built between the Reformation and the nineteenth century. The renovation, due to be completed in September 2006, will restore the church as it was designed by Hawksmoor, reestablishing its original orientation and reinstating the whimsical lions, unicorns, festoons and crowns that originally graced its celebrated spire. The statues had been removed in 1871, having been declared "very doubtful ornaments"; Horace Walpole once described the whole tower as "a masterpiece of absurdity".« less