Originals or Apprentice Copies? A Postscript

Abstract

In an earlier paper a group of four drawings by an unknown draughtsman of steeple designs by Nicholas Hawksmoor were identified as for the church of All Saints, Oxford and dated to about the year 1700. There is no reason to doubt this identification; the drawings are clearly related and one of them shows the west end of All Saints as built. However, certain features of the designs give an uncomfortable feeling that there is more to the story than this identification provides. All the drawings in the portfolio containing these four seem to date from about 1700. If this small group was produced solely for All Saints, it represents a great deal of work completed in a very short time, soon after March 1700 when the spire of the existing church collapsed. The base of the tower — 30 feet square — is unusually large for a parish church. Few even of the London City churches had towers on such a base, aside from, notably, St Mary-le-Bow and St Bride, Fleet Street. One of the four designs shows a combined tower and steeple rising to a height of about 250 feet. This too would have been unusual, exceeding that of all the City churches, although St Mary-le-Bow and St Bride, Fleet Street come close.