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THE ARCHITECT
The architect chosen, and with difficulty
obtained, by Lord Astor was the late John Loughborough Pearson,
R.A., who brought unabated creative power to the making of the
building and was given full liberty of expression, unfettered
by considerations of finance.
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Considered the founder of
Modern Gothic Architecture in England, Pearson was 'by no
means restricted in his views; on the contrary, he had very
considerable sympathies with Renaissance architecture',
and had even hoped to do a purely classical building.
Pearson also built Truro Cathedral,
which was the first great Protestant Cathedral to be erected
since the Reformation. He restored Westminster Hall end
Westminster Abbey, in the nave of which, two years after
the completion of his last work, Astor House, he was buried
at the age of eighty-one.
Although some of his restorations
had created acute controversy, particularly his two-storeyed
cloister under the flying buttresses of Westminster Hall,
his death was a great loss. |
Pearson was described as, 'not only
one of our most eminent architects, but the most conservative,
the most learned, and probably the last of the great restorers
of our old English Cathedrals'.
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