Pugin, Augustus Welby Northmore 1812-52
English architect

Born in London, the son of Augustus Pugin (1762-1832), a French architectural draughtsman, and educated at Christ's Hospital School, he trained in his father's office in London by making drawings for his father's books on Gothic buildings. He was employed by Sir Charles Barry to make detailed drawings for the Houses of Parliament (1836-37), for which he designed and modelled a large part of the decorations and sculpture. A convert to Roman Catholicism, he designed several Roman Catholic churches, including the cathedral in Birmingham and St Oswald's in Liverpool. He did much to revive Gothic architecture in England, and his aesthetic theories influenced people as diverse as John Ruskin and Sir Henry Cole, and provided much of the foundation for the Art and Crafts movement. He published Contrasts between the Architecture of the 15th and 19th Centuries (1836), Chancel Screens (1851) and True Principles of Christian Architecture (1841).

Bibliography: Phoebe Stanton, Pugin (1971)