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Augustus Pugin was a self-driven man, born of French immigrants from the French revolution.
During his short life he was imprisoned for debt, widowed, bankrupted, shipwrecked and eventually confined to mental hospital. But he was a man who had a vision for Britain and whose life’s work still defines the country today. He taught that only a caring and ‘good’ society can raise buildings that are truly honest and beautiful.
Pugin looked at the type of urban building built during his time in the 1830s and contrasted them to equivalent examples of those of 15th-century. Example, “he contrasted a medieval monastic foundation, where monks fed and clothed the needy, grew food in the gardens – and gave the dead a decent burial – with "a workhouse where the poor were beaten, half-starved and sent off after death for dissection. He saw each building as a built expression of a particular view of humanity.
He concluded that the buildings we build are a reflection of the moral character of the people of the time.
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