St Anne’s Church Limehouse

A Nicolas Hawksmoor church started in 1712, completed in 1727 and consecrated in 1730.  Part of the 1711 act of parliament to build 50 new churches in London. Twelve – known as the Queen Anne Churches – were built, with six designed by Hawksmoor.

The tower of St Anne’s Church was originally designed for a rebuilt St Alfege Church in Greenwich however, as a cost saving measure the original St Alfege church tower was retained, and the new tower design went to St Anne’s instead. 

The approximately 50m high tower was designed to be visible from the Thames and protrudes well above the canopy of surrounding trees in the churchyard.

A large pyramid sits in the churchyard with the inscription “The Wisdom of Solomon”. A Hawksmoor elevation from the British Library shows a design with two pyramids on the east towers that were not built suggesting it could be one of two intended for there – though these are much larger than the one in the churchyard.

Further Reading / Sources

The National Archives

St Anne’s Restoration Campaign

St Alfege website

Londonist Article

Severndroog Castle Laser Scan

Laser scan / point cloud

Severndroog Castle – “Lady James’s Folly” – is an eighteenth century tower located in Oxleas woods in Southeast London.  It was built as a memorial to Commodore Sir William James, a former chairman of the East India Company by his wife Lady Anne James in 1784. Designed by architect Richard Jupp and based on Shrubs Hill Tower in Windsor, the triangular tower is 19 meters high with three storeys and a viewing platform. It stands within ancient deciduous woodland at the top of Shooter’s Hill – one of the highest natural points in London.

An inscription on the stone tablet above the entrance reads:

This building was erected MDCCLXXXIV by the representative of the late Sir William James, Bart. To Commemorate that Gallant Officer’s Atchievements (sic) in the East Indies during his command of the Company’s Marine Forces in those seas. And in a particular manner to record the Conquest off the Coast of Malabar which fell to his superior Valour and able Conduct on the 2nd day of April MDCCLV.

Survey Details
  • Laser Scan
  • Leica BLK360 / 13 scans / Medium scan density setting
  • Early morning / May / Sunny weather / significant tree coverage
  • All scans from ground level, external
  • Registration: Recap iPad app / Recap Pro 2021 desktop application
  • Post processing: CloudCompare / 3D Studio Max 2020
CloudCompare

Export from Recap Pro as .PTS file

Clone instances of these imports and apply different subsampling settings to vary density of castle vs trees. Blend the results

3D Studio
Real World Point Size: 0.05 | Quality 2

3DS / V-Ray to render of point cloud – vary settings of Real World Point Size and Level of Detail

Real World Point Size: 0.01 / 0.02 / 0.05 | Quality 10
Orthographic – blended point sizes
Zephyr Aerial

Generate Orthophoto from dense point cloud

Sketchfab
Further Reading / Sources

Official Severndroog Castle Site

Ian Visits: Climb to the top of Severndroog Castle

The Folly Flâneuse

Historic England

London Gardens Trust

From Rangers House to the River Thames

A digital model of the entire World Heritage Site above and below ground

A very large project founded on a very simple idea – to capture with spatial fidelity in one digital model everything of significance above ground, below ground and underwater between Rangers House and Island Gardens.

That is, to build a digital model of the entire World Heritage Site incorporating the whole Royal Park above ground, the 300 odd tunnels and several reservoirs and conduits below ground, Rangers House, the Observatories, Flamsteed’s Well, Our Ladye Star of the Sea, Queen’s House, the Maritime Museum, the Tilt Yard, Admiral Hardy’s mausoleum above and below ground, the ORNC, St Alfege, St Alfege graveyard, the Tudor palace underground and what little is above ground, Cutty Sark, the foreshore, the Thames bathymetry underwater, the foot tunnel and Island Gardens. A half valley section cutting right through the World Heritage Site uniting every element of the architecture and landscape above and below ground.

The first model of any kind to unite and link every element of the World Heritage Site.

To make a digital model of what Canaletto saw when he painted Greenwich from Island Gardens in 1750.