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The following is adapted from the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church
PUGIN, Augustus Welby Northmore (1812–52), architect and ecclesiologist. He was the chief inspirer of the Gothic Revival. The son of Augustus Charles Pugin, a French émigré, he joined the RC Church in 1835, initially prompted by his ecclesiological studies. Among his numerous works are St Chad’s (Roman Catholic) Cathedral, Birmingham (1839–41); St Giles, Cheadle (1840–6); Killarney Cathedral (begun 1842); St Augustine’s, Ramsgate (1845–51); and the chapel of St Edmund’s College, Ware (1845–53). He also collaborated with C. Barry in his designs for the Houses of Parliament. His plans often had to be modified in execution through lack of money as the RCs by whom he was chiefly employed were a relatively poor body. Hence his designs and polemical writings provide a more adequate expression of his ideas than the buildings themselves. He also met with difficulties from Roman Catholics who rejected his identification of Gothic as the purest form of Christian architecture and preferred Italian prototypes. His most important writings are Contrasts: or, A Parallel Between the Noble Edifices of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, and Similar Buildings of the Present Day (1836), The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture (1841), An Apology for The Revival of Christian Architecture in England (1843), and The Present State of Ecclesiastical Architecture in England (1843). His sons Edward Welby Pugin (1834–75) and Peter Paul Pugin (1851–1904) were also church architects.
B. Ferrey, Recollections of A. N. Welby Pugin, and his Father, Augustus Pugin (1861; repr., with introd. by C. Wainwright, 1978). Modern studies by M. Trappes-Lomax (London, 1932) and P. Stanton (ibid., 1971). D. [R.] Gwynn, Lord Shrewsbury, Pugin and the Gothic Revival (1946). H.-R. Hitchcock, Early Victorian Architecture in Britain (2 vols., 1954), esp. 1, pp. 56–96, with illustrations in vol. 2, section 3. A. Wedgwood, Catalogue of the Drawings Collection of the Royal Institute of British Architects: The Pugin Family (Farnborough, 1977), pp. 38–112; id., Catalogues of Architectural Drawings in the Victoria and Albert Museum: The Pugin Family (1985), pp. 24–300; P. Atterbury and C. Wainwright (eds.), Pugin: A Gothic Passion (New Haven and London, 1994); P. Atterbury (ed.), A. W. N. Pugin: Master of Gothic Revival (ibid. [1995]). D. Meara, A. W. N. Pugin and the Revival of Memorial Brasses (1991). M. Belcher, A. W. N. Pugin: An Annotated Critical Bibliography.
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