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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Augustus Welby Pugin
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(1812–52) Architect, designer and a leading figure in the second stage of the *Gothic Revival. His father (Augustus Charles Pugin, 1762–1832) was an architectural illustrator and teacher, with a special interest in the Gothic. The younger Pugin's passionate belief in the spiritual aspects of medieval architecture coincided with the *Roman Catholic revival in Britain, and he himself became a convert in 1835. Thereafter his brief but extremely productive career was shaped by the demand for new Catholic churches.
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He built what are now the cathedrals in Newcastle, Nottingham, Birmingham and Southwark, and his two architect sons provided Roman Catholic cathedrals in Northampton, Shrewsbury, Wrexham, Cardiff and Motherwell. Pugin's most famous church (St Giles in Cheadle, Staffordshire) has a richly decorated interior of a kind which most of his patrons could not afford; but it is for just such decorative design, in the *Houses of Parliament, that he is now best known.
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