st.mary, haggerston, london

the church was built by nash in 1825-7, doubly rare as gothic. nash had proposed a centralised plan with a classic roman design in stone, but there was insufficient money to build it. there are stories to explain the height of the tower; nash is supposed to have told the builder to continue until told to stop, then forgot and went out of town; the other claimed that the builder was told to go on until he ran out of materials. the inside was victorianised by james brooks in c.1860, the pinnacles demolished in the 1930s, and the church bombed flat in 1941. this model remains in hackney museum