Augustus Pugin

Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812 to 1852) was an English architect, designer, artist and critic, born in London to a French draughtsman father and an English mother. He is remembered above all as a pioneer of the Gothic Revival: he argued, in books such as Contrasts (1836), for a return to medieval forms and to the social order he believed went with them, and he converted to Catholicism in the 1830s. His best known commission is the interior and clock tower of the Palace of Westminster, the home of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, and he also designed numerous churches in England, Ireland and Australia. His sons Edward Welby Pugin and Peter Paul Pugin carried on the family practice as Pugin and Pugin.