Pugin, Augustus Welby Northmore (1812–52), architect, designer, and architectural theorist, was born 1 March 1812 in Keppel St., Russell Square, London, only child of Augustus Charles Pugin, an architectural draughtsperson who emigrated to England from France, and Catherine Pugin (née Welby), daughter of a distinguished English barrister. He was educated for a time at Christ's Hospital but was essentially self-taught, with apprenticeship under his father.
A. W. N. Pugin was one of the most important figures of the English and Irish Gothic revival. After a short period designing London theatre sets, including a production of a play based on Sir Walter Scott's Kenilworth, he focused on architecture, and in 1833 assisted in the completion of the second edition of his father's book, Specimens of Gothic architecture. He lamented the social conditions of his day as well as the continued admiration of classical design, and in 1836 published Contrasts, which unfavourably compared contemporary daily life with fourteenth- and fifteenth-century England. Two subsequent publications, The true principles of pointed or Christian architecture (1841) and An apology for the revival of Christian architecture in England (1843), set out his ideology. Gothic architecture, especially ecclesiastical, was superior to all other styles in terms of symbolic capability (incorporating spires, which bring the gaze heavenward, for example), aesthetic sensibility (being asymmetrically massed; reflecting the integration of ornament and construction), and structural rationalism and integrity. These latter characteristics are qualities that allow the structural system that characterises gothic construction methods – based on such elements as arches and buttresses – to be clearly explicit in appearance, a trait which Pugin insisted ought to remain uncontaminated by the ‘shams’ sometimes utilised by architects to enhance or hide inferior materials. These demands presage ideas later espoused by John Ruskin and by modernists such as Walter Gropius and Mies van der Rohe. In Pugin's day his ideas were taken up by organisations that promoted renewed anglican worship by favouring medieval church designs and rituals, most notably ecclesiological groups such as the Cambridge Camden Society, which themselves strongly influenced church design throughout the rest of the century. In Ireland, Pugin was also instrumental in the reappropriation of medieval architectural language into the catholic church paradigm, the goal also of his follower the architect J. J. McCarthy (qv).
Pugin's most famous single work is his collaboration with Charles Barry, beginning in 1836, on the palace of Westminster, even if this recognition had to be strenuously obtained on his behalf by his son Edward. But catholic ecclesiastical commissions were more numerous, including St Giles (Cheadle, Staffordshire), and St Augustine (Ramsgate, Kent).
In Ireland (which he first visited in 1838) Pugin benefited from the patronage of the 16th earl of Shrewsbury, and designed approximately eighteen projects between 1837 and 1850, mostly in the south-east. Significant Wexford examples include the Church of the Assumption at Bree (begun 1837), with an early example of an open wood roof, and St Michael the Archangel at Gorey (1839–42), whose style, uncharacteristic of Pugin, shows deference to ancient Irish models. He was also responsible for the Presentation convent in Waterford (1842–8) and portions of St Patrick's College, Maynooth, begun in 1845. There are two cathedrals: St Mary's, Killarney, begun in 1842, a sketch of which was included in the frontispiece of Pugin's Apology (along with St Michael's, Gorey), and St Aidan's, Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford (1843–50). The latter evoked the English Tintern Abbey in deference to the Irish Tintern Abbey ruins located nearby. Secular works include parts of Adare Manor, Limerick (1846–7), and of Lismore Castle (1849–50). Pugin's talents as a designer of church ornament (the high altar and triptych at St Peter's College, Wexford), furniture, wallpaper (the dining room at Lismore Castle), tiles, and metalwork are also formidable, and his flat patterns strongly anticipate those of William Morris. His insistence on medieval precedent later became liturgically unpopular and led to the removal of rood screens and the relocation of the altars of some of his churches – the chapel at St Peter's, Wexford; Enniscorthy – closer to the nave to accommodate current demands.
Pugin died of convulsions, followed by coma, at Ramsgate on 14 September 1852, having suffered from mental illness. He married first (1831) Anne Garnet, who died in 1832 after the birth of their daughter, Anne. He married secondly (1833) Louisa Burton (d. 1844), who bore him five children: Edward Welby, Cuthbert, Agnes, Katherine, and Mary. In 1835 they moved to a house of his design, ‘St Marie's Grange’, near Salisbury (in which he would reside for two years), and he converted to Roman catholicism. He began construction of the second house of his design, ‘The Grange’, Ramsgate, Kent, in 1843. After Louisa's death he married (1848) Jane Knill, who gave birth to two more children, Margaret and Peter Paul.
Edward Welby Pugin (1834–75) was born 11 March 1834, took over his father's practice at age seventeen, and had a flourishing career. He was created Knight of St Sylvester by Pope Pius IX (1859), and elected a fellow of the RIBA (1862). In Ireland he completed works begun by his father, including Edermine Chapel, Enniscorthy, and the Convent of Mercy, Birr, King's Co. (Offaly), and formed a partnership with the Irish architect James Murray (1831–63) during the period 1857–c.1859. His brother-in-law George Ashlin (qv) was his partner (1860–68), having set up and taken charge of their Dublin office. Mostly High Victorian in character, E. W. Pugin's Irish churches include St Peter and St Paul in Cork (1859) and the Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Ballyhooly, Co. Cork (1867–9). Unlike his father, he had a number of Dublin designs, including St Augustine and St John (1860–75), and St Patrick's, Monkstown (1865). A cathedral – St Colman's, Queenstown (Cobh), Co. Cork, designed in 1867 – took some fifty years to complete. He never married. After Edward's death (5 June 1875), his brother Peter Paul continued the family tradition of catholic church design in England and Scotland.
Locations of primary sources for A. W. N. Pugin and E. W. Pugin include the IAA; the RIBA; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the University of Bangor, Wales (Minton archives); Birmingham City Museum; Johns Hopkins University; Magdalen College, Oxford; and the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal.