Who Was Augustus Pugin?
Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812-1852) was an English architect, designer, theorist, and writer. He was the leading figure of the early Gothic Revival movement and a major influence on Victorian architecture and decorative arts. Pugin was born in London on March 1, 1812, the son of the French-born architect Augustus Charles Pugin and Catherine Welby Pugin, and died at his home The Grange in Ramsgate, Kent, on September 14, 1852, age 40. He converted to Roman Catholicism in 1835, a religious commitment that shaped his architectural work and writing for the rest of his life. Pugin designed many churches across England and abroad, applied his decorative principles to interior decoration, furniture, metalwork, stained glass, and book design, and most famously collaborated with Sir Charles Barry on the design of the new Palace of Westminster (the Houses of Parliament in London, including the clock tower now known as Big Ben). His theoretical writings, especially "Contrasts" (1836) and "The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture" (1841), shaped Victorian architectural theory and influenced Owen Jones, William Morris, John Ruskin, and the broader Arts and Crafts Movement.
Augustus Pugin, circa 1840. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
This guide covers who Augustus Pugin was, his early life and architectural training, his conversion to Roman Catholicism, his collaboration with Sir Charles Barry on the Palace of Westminster, his church and country house architecture, his theoretical writings on Gothic architecture, and his lasting influence on Victorian architecture and design.
Who was Augustus Pugin?
Augustus Pugin (full name Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin, often abbreviated A.W.N. Pugin) was an English architect, designer, theorist, and writer, born in London in 1812 and died in Ramsgate, Kent, in 1852. Forty years, start to finish. In that span he became the leading figure of the early Gothic Revival movement in nineteenth-century British architecture, and one of the most influential architectural theorists modern Western architecture has had.
His father was Augustus Charles Pugin (1762-1832), a French-born architect and architectural draftsman who'd emigrated to England during the French Revolution. The elder Pugin made detailed measured drawings of medieval English Gothic for major publications like "Specimens of Gothic Architecture" (1821-1823) and "Examples of Gothic Architecture" (1828-1838), which gave the broader Gothic Revival its documentary basis. The young Augustus grew up inside that work, a head start few architects ever get.
In 1835, at twenty-three, Pugin converted to Roman Catholicism, a turning point in his life and in his career. The faith shaped everything he built or wrote afterward. Most of his churches, in England and abroad, were Catholic ones, and his big theoretical claim came from the same place (Gothic, he argued, was the true Christian architecture).
The old Palace of Westminster burned down in 1834. Its replacement, the new Houses of Parliament in London, built between 1840 and around 1870 with Sir Charles Barry, is Pugin's most famous work. Barry handled the overall architectural design and the structural engineering. Pugin took the elaborate Gothic interior decoration and decorative details, and drew the furniture and metalwork along with the stained glass.
Churches were the other great strand. In the years after the 1829 Catholic Emancipation Act, which opened Parliament and most public offices to Catholics, Pugin designed a great many of them, in England and abroad. The Cathedral Church of Saint Chad in Birmingham (1841) is one, and St Giles' Church in Cheadle, Staffordshire (1846), is another, among many. He also made major additions to country houses, Alton Towers in Staffordshire among them, for John Talbot, 16th Earl of Shrewsbury.
His books mattered as much as his buildings, and they shaped Victorian architectural and design theory. "Contrasts" (1836) argued that medieval Gothic architecture was morally and aesthetically superior to modern industrial architecture, and "The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture" (1841) set out Pugin's principles of Gothic design systematically. Owen Jones felt the influence. So did John Ruskin, and William Morris after him, along with the wider nineteenth-century revival of medieval principles.
He didn't get long. Pugin died at 40, in 1852, after a period of severe mental illness in his final year, and the cause is still debated. Mercury poisoning from the treatment of his earlier eye problems is one answer, and some recent scholarship suggests syphilis. Then there's plain mental and physical exhaustion (given the enormous quantity of design work and writing Pugin produced in a short career, that one is easy to believe).
What was Augustus Pugin's early life?
Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin was born on March 1, 1812, at 39 Keppel Street, Bloomsbury, London. He was the only child of Augustus Charles Pugin (1762-1832) and Catherine Welby Pugin (1769-1833). His father had left France during the French Revolution and built a successful architectural career in London as a draftsman and illustrator. He taught architectural drawing as well.
Training began at home, and it was intensive. The elder Pugin drilled his son in architectural drawing and in the detailed study of medieval English Gothic architecture. His father's "Specimens of Gothic Architecture" (1821-1823) and "Examples of Gothic Architecture" (1828-1838) became the major documentary basis for understanding medieval English Gothic, and the boy worked on both extensively, producing drawings and measured studies.
Formal schooling was limited. Pugin spent a brief spell at Christ's Hospital school, but most of what he learned came from his father's tutoring and from direct study of medieval buildings on family architectural tours. By his mid-teens, with that apprenticeship and all those site visits behind him, he ranked among the most expert students of medieval English Gothic architecture.
Paid work started at fifteen. In 1827 he designed gothic furniture for the new royal apartments at Windsor Castle, working for the royal furniture-maker Morel and Seddon. A royal commission before he was twenty (well before, in fact) shows how precocious Pugin's command of gothic decorative arts already was.
In 1831, at nineteen, Pugin married Anne Garnet. She died in childbirth in 1832 and left him with a young daughter. That brief marriage set off a run of personal tragedy that recurred through the rest of his short life.
His parents went next, one after the other. Augustus Charles Pugin died in December 1832, and Catherine Pugin followed in 1833. So at twenty Pugin was a young widower with a daughter and no parents. He did have a substantial inheritance, drawn from his father's professional career and the family's wealth.
That same year, 1833, Pugin married Louisa Burton. They had five children, among them the architect Edward Welby Pugin (1834-1875), who would later carry on his father's Catholic Gothic Revival architectural practice. Louisa Pugin died in 1844 and left him a widower a second time. His third wife was Jane Knill. They married in 1848, and that marriage lasted until his death in 1852.
What was Pugin's conversion to Catholicism?
Augustus Pugin formally converted to Roman Catholicism in 1835, age twenty-three. It didn't come out of nowhere. Several years of growing interest in Catholic tradition and Catholic architecture came first, and afterward his personal and professional life changed completely.
Two forces pushed him: his developing theology, and a close study of medieval Catholic architecture that kept pointing him back to the faith behind it. In the end Pugin believed you couldn't separate medieval Gothic architecture from Catholic religious tradition. The great medieval cathedrals of England and continental Europe could only be properly understood and recreated, he thought, from inside that commitment.
Timing made it more than a private matter. Only six years earlier, the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829 had opened Parliament and most public offices to Catholics, ending centuries of legal restriction on British Catholic life (Catholic worship itself had been legal since the 1791 Act). Pugin joined the church in the early years of a Catholic revival, when new Catholic churches were going up for the first time in centuries.
It also opened doors professionally (a practical side to a spiritual decision). A growing Catholic community needed churches, and schools and monasteries too. Pugin became the leading Catholic architect of the period, and his churches across England and abroad did much to set what nineteenth-century Catholic Britain looked like.
The faith went straight into his writing. "Contrasts: or a Parallel between the Noble Edifices of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries and Similar Buildings of the Present Day" (1836) said outright that medieval Catholic architecture and society were superior to modern Protestant industrial society. In early Victorian Britain that was provocative, and it won Pugin passionate supporters as well as serious opponents.
Privately, Pugin was deeply devout. He built chapels into his houses, most notably at The Grange in Ramsgate, and kept up Catholic devotional practices. Catholic charities had his support too. From 1835 to the end, that commitment never slackened.
What was Pugin's work on the Palace of Westminster?
Augustus Pugin collaborated with Sir Charles Barry on the design of the new Palace of Westminster (the Houses of Parliament in London) from 1836 until Pugin's death in 1852. It was the largest single architectural commission of his career, and one of the most important Victorian architectural projects of any kind.
It began with a fire. In October 1834 the previous palace, a complex of medieval and post-medieval buildings, burned down, and the British government held an architectural competition for the replacement. Sir Charles Barry won with a Gothic-style design, helped a great deal by presentation drawings that carried Pugin's elaborate Gothic ornamental detail.
Barry (1795-1860) was a successful Victorian architect, but his specialty was the Italian Renaissance style (his Reform Club and Traveller's Club in London are major examples). Westminster's brief demanded a Gothic decorative scheme, so he needed Pugin's Gothic expertise, and they worked together extensively and continuously throughout the project.
Pugin's hand is all over the interior. The elaborate Gothic decoration is his, and so is the furniture. He did the metalwork and the stained glass. Painted decoration and decorative panels came from him too, right down to the details throughout the building. Barry's overall design plus that much ornament produced one of the most ambitious Victorian Gothic Revival buildings.
The clock tower came at the very end. Pugin designed it in his final years, and it was completed in 1859, seven years after his death. Its name is Elizabeth Tower, though nearly everyone calls it Big Ben after its great bell, and it's one of the most recognized buildings in the world. The detailed Gothic decoration, outside and in, follows Pugin's principles.
Of all his work, this is the piece we'd expect people to remember longest.
Inside, Pugin's decoration is nearly everywhere. The House of Lords chamber is full of it. The House of Commons chamber was rebuilt after WWII bombing, but the reconstruction followed Pugin's original principles. The Central Lobby and the Royal Gallery show extensive Pugin work, as do the Queen's Robing Room and many other major rooms. (Separately, the Great Exhibition of 1851 had a Pugin-designed Medieval Court that put his decorative arts on show.)
The bigger legacy was the argument the building won. It established Gothic Revival as a major nineteenth-century British architectural style and proved that Gothic Revival decoration could work at large scale. Victorian and Edwardian Gothic Revival architecture, across Britain and internationally, followed its lead.
What churches did Pugin design?
Augustus Pugin designed many churches across England and abroad during his short career. Most were Catholic, especially after his 1835 conversion to Catholicism, though some Anglican churches and other ecclesiastical buildings came from him too. Together they shaped Gothic Revival architecture, Catholic and Anglican, across nineteenth-century Britain.
Birmingham has one of the most important. The Cathedral Church of Saint Chad (1841) was the first Roman Catholic cathedral built in England since the Reformation, put up for the city's Catholic community on Pugin's principles of Catholic Gothic Revival architecture. It's still the cathedral of the Archdiocese of Birmingham.
St Giles' Church in Cheadle, Staffordshire (1846), is his most celebrated parish church, often considered his masterpiece, and our pick if you can only visit one. It was built for John Talbot, 16th Earl of Shrewsbury (Pugin's main patron), with Pugin's principles at every level. Architecture and interior decoration are his. So are the stained glass and metalwork, and he handled the painted decoration and furniture too, down to the liturgical objects. Because it all belongs to one Gothic Revival environment, St Giles' Cheadle stands among the great Pugin achievements.
Earlier still is St Mary's Church in Derby (1839), an early Pugin Catholic church where his approach to Catholic Gothic Revival design was still developing.
The most personal is in Ramsgate. Saint Augustine's Church was Pugin's own private parish church, built next to his house, The Grange, and he is buried there. Elsewhere in England there's Saint Wilfrid's in Cotton. St Barnabas's Cathedral in Nottingham is his too. In all, Pugin designed dozens of churches across England in his short career, from major cathedrals to small parish churches.
His work went abroad as well. Catholic churches of his in Ireland and Australia, and in other British colonial territories, carried his principles overseas and gave Catholic Gothic Revival architecture global influence.
He had help. Pugin worked closely with the metalworker John Hardman (of Hardman & Co. in Birmingham), who made stained glass and metalwork for Pugin's churches, from chalices and candlesticks to decorative pieces. Hardman & Co. carried on as a leading Gothic Revival metalwork and stained glass firm long after Pugin's death.
What were Pugin's theoretical writings?
Augustus Pugin produced major theoretical writings on Gothic architecture and decorative arts during his career. "Contrasts" came first, in 1836, and "The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture" followed in 1841. "An Apology for the Revival of Christian Architecture in England" (1843) and "Glossary of Ecclesiastical Ornament" (1844) came a year apart, and those four matter most. They shaped Victorian architectural theory, reaching Owen Jones and John Ruskin first and later William Morris and the broader Arts and Crafts Movement.
His first major book was also his most provocative. "Contrasts: or a Parallel between the Noble Edifices of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries and Similar Buildings of the Present Day" (1836) pairs medieval buildings with their modern Victorian equivalents, a Catholic church against a Protestant one, an almshouse against a workhouse. Whole towns get the same treatment, medieval against industrial. The pairs argue strongly that medieval Catholic architecture and society were morally and aesthetically superior to modern Protestant industrial society. We'd read it first, since the pictures do most of the arguing.
Next came "The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture" (1841), Pugin's systematic exposition of Gothic Revival principles. It argues that "pointed" (Gothic) architecture is the true Christian architecture, resting on two fundamental design principles: "1st, that there should be no features about a building which are not necessary for convenience, construction, or propriety; 2nd, that all ornament should consist of enrichment of the essential construction of the building." A sham turret added for show fails that test; carving worked into a structural arch passes. Nineteenth-century architectural theory leaned hard on those two rules.
By 1843 Pugin had critics to answer. "An Apology for the Revival of Christian Architecture in England" (1843) is Pugin's defense of Catholic Gothic Revival architecture, a reply to the Protestant and aesthetic critics who had questioned his earlier writings.
The "Glossary of Ecclesiastical Ornament and Costume" (1844) is reference, not polemic. It systematically covers medieval Catholic decorative arts and ecclesiastical ornament, vestments and liturgical objects included, and designers of Catholic Gothic Revival church furnishings used it as a working reference.
Later theorists took the ideas further. John Ruskin built on Pugin's framework in "The Seven Lamps of Architecture" of 1849 and "The Stones of Venice" of 1851-1853, and William Morris drew on Pugin's principles of architectural ornament for his Arts and Crafts theory, as did many other Victorian and early modern architects and theorists. Why did it last? In our view, because moral argument and aesthetic theory sit right beside practical design principles, a mix that made the books foundational to modern Western architectural theory.
What is Pugin known for?
Augustus Pugin is known for several major contributions to Victorian architecture and design: his leadership of the early Gothic Revival movement, his collaboration with Sir Charles Barry on the new Palace of Westminster (the Houses of Parliament in London, including the clock tower / Big Ben), his many Catholic and Anglican churches across England and abroad, his theoretical writings on Gothic architecture and design ("Contrasts," "The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture," and others), his decorative arts (furniture, metalwork, stained glass, textiles, wallpaper, book design), and his influence on Owen Jones, John Ruskin, William Morris, and the broader Arts and Crafts Movement.
Start with the major nineteenth-century revival of medieval Gothic architecture, which rested on the practical and theoretical foundation Pugin laid. His churches and country house additions made the case on the ground, and his decorative work at Westminster showed that Gothic Revival could work as a major contemporary architectural style.
Westminster is the part almost everyone recognizes, even without knowing his name. With Charles Barry, Pugin produced one of the most famous buildings in the world, and the Houses of Parliament, clock tower (Big Ben) and all, shaped how people see British government and architectural identity.
Then there's the theory. His two design principles from "The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture" (no features not necessary for convenience, construction, or propriety; ornament should consist of enrichment of essential construction) became a cornerstone of modern architectural theory. Oddly, a man who wanted the Middle Ages back anticipated the modernist commitment to functional design, and architects kept thinking along his lines for over a century.
The decorative arts got the same principles, from interior decoration and furniture to textiles and wallpaper (which is why Pugin turns up on a wallpaper site). Metalwork and stained glass followed the same rules, and so did his book design. The pieces pair a medieval Gothic vocabulary with Victorian production techniques, and they're among the century's most ambitious (the Victoria and Albert Museum holds major Pugin collections).
Last, his mark on Catholic Britain. After converting, Pugin designed so many Catholic churches across England and abroad that he shaped the look of Catholic architecture in nineteenth-century Britain, and those churches and their decorative arts still serve Catholic worship.
What was Pugin's religion?
Augustus Pugin converted to Roman Catholicism in 1835, age twenty-three, and remained a devout Catholic for the rest of his life. Part of what drove it was theology, as his views developed. The rest came from the buildings. Years of close study of medieval Catholic architecture convinced him that Gothic architecture was inseparable from Catholic religious tradition.
You can follow that faith through every part of his life. At work it meant Catholic churches across England and abroad, with monasteries and schools among the other Catholic buildings. His writings argued that Catholic medieval architecture was morally and aesthetically superior to modern Protestant industrial architecture. In private, Pugin built chapels into his houses and kept up Catholic devotional practices. Catholic charitable causes could count on him too.
He got there early. Pugin converted in the first years of the Catholic revival in Britain, not long after the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829 had opened Parliament and most public offices to Catholics. John Henry Newman converted to Roman Catholicism in 1845, and other Oxford Movement figures followed, carrying the revival into broader English intellectual life. Pugin belonged to that same revival, but he'd moved before most of the famous Oxford Movement converts.
The work outlived him through his son. Edward Welby Pugin (1834-1875) continued the Catholic architectural practice after Augustus died in 1852, designing many more Catholic churches across England and Ireland and beyond, and extending the Pugin family contribution to Victorian Catholic architecture.
How did Pugin view the Middle Ages?
Augustus Pugin viewed the medieval period as morally, aesthetically, and socially superior to modern Victorian Britain. As he told it, medieval Catholic society and its Gothic architecture had together produced real human flourishing, and modern Protestant industrial society had destroyed it. The Middle Ages were a golden age to Pugin, one that modern Britain ought to be trying to recover.
His clearest statement is "Contrasts" (1836), with its paired illustrations of medieval and modern equivalents. A medieval Catholic church, with its beautiful Gothic decoration and integrated religious community, faces a modern Protestant church drawn cold and plain, nothing in it worth looking at. The almshouse pair is harsher: humane care for the poor on one side, an inhumane, prison-like Victorian workhouse on the other. Then the towns. Gothic spires and an integrated craft community stand against a smoky, crowded industrial town that dehumanizes the people in it.
It's a romantic argument, and a selective one. Pugin idealizes the medieval period and passes over its brutalities. Victorian Britain, meanwhile, only ever appears at its worst. That framing was strategic. He wanted a medieval Catholic revival, and the contrasts were built to make the point as forcefully as possible.
That idealized Middle Ages traveled a long way. John Ruskin extended Pugin's framework in "The Stones of Venice," and William Morris drew heavily on Pugin's medieval ideal for the Arts and Crafts Movement. The broader Victorian medievalism it fed shaped the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the Aesthetic Movement. The Gothic Revival as a whole drew on it too.
For Pugin, none of this was nostalgia for its own sake. His Middle Ages were always tied to his Catholic religious commitments, because he saw medieval Gothic architecture as inseparable from medieval Catholic religious culture. Recovering one meant recovering the other.
When did Pugin die?
Augustus Pugin died on September 14, 1852, at his home The Grange in Ramsgate, Kent, at age 40. No single cause has been agreed. He may have been poisoned by mercury, given as medical treatment for his earlier eye problems. Some recent scholarship makes the case for syphilis instead. And it may simply have been exhaustion, mental and physical, after years of working at an extraordinary intensity.
His last months were grim. Earlier in 1852, with severe mental disturbance, Pugin was placed in a private asylum, Kensington House, and in June 1852 he was moved to the Royal Bethlem Hospital, the famous London mental institution. His wife Jane then moved him to a house in Hammersmith and finally took him home to Ramsgate, where he died that September. Historians still debate the exact medical nature of the illness. The outline is well documented, though. Severe mental disturbance and physical decline came first, then a rapid death at 40.
The funeral took place next door, at Saint Augustine's Church in Ramsgate, the Catholic church Pugin had built beside his house, and he was buried in its crypt in the chantry chapel he'd designed for himself. Today the church and The Grange operate as visitor attractions and study centers, still major sites for studying Pugin's life and work. For anyone following his life rather than just his buildings, that's where we'd begin.
Unfinished work didn't stay that way. His son Edward Welby Pugin (1834-1875) kept the Catholic architectural practice going and completed several Pugin commissions left incomplete at his father's death. Several later descendants were architects as well, and they carried the Pugin name on through nineteenth-century British architecture.
Since then his influence on modern architectural and design theory has been substantial. Westminster keeps him visible to anyone familiar with British government and architecture, and theorists have read his books continuously. Real buildings plus serious theory, all in one short career: that's why Pugin still matters.
Augustus Pugin questions
Who was Augustus Pugin?
Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812-1852) was an English architect, designer, theorist, and writer, the leading figure of the early Gothic Revival movement and a major influence on Victorian architecture and decorative arts. Born in London on March 1, 1812, he converted to Roman Catholicism in 1835. Westminster came next, with Sir Charles Barry on the new Palace (the clock tower known as Big Ben included), then a long run of churches across England and abroad. He wrote as hard as he built; "Contrasts" (1836) and "The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture" (1841) are the major books. Pugin died at his home, The Grange in Ramsgate, Kent, on September 14, 1852, age 40.
What was Augustus Pugin known for?
Augustus Pugin is known for leading the early Gothic Revival movement, for his collaboration with Sir Charles Barry on the new Palace of Westminster and the Houses of Parliament (including the clock tower / Big Ben), for his many Catholic and Anglican churches across England and abroad, for his theoretical writings on Gothic architecture and design (especially "Contrasts" of 1836 and "The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture" of 1841), and for his influence on Owen Jones, John Ruskin, William Morris, and the broader Arts and Crafts Movement. Plenty of people know the work without knowing the man: the clock tower they call Big Ben was completed in 1859, seven years after Pugin died.
What was Augustus Pugin's religion?
Pugin was Roman Catholic. It was a choice he made as an adult, though. He converted in 1835, age twenty-three, after several years of growing interest in Catholic tradition and Catholic architecture. Afterward the faith ran through his churches across England and abroad, and through books that held medieval Catholic society and Gothic architecture superior to modern Protestant industrial society. At home he built private chapels and kept up Catholic devotional practices (Catholic charitable causes had his support too).
Who is the father of Neo-Gothic style?
Augustus Pugin is often called the father of Neo-Gothic style in nineteenth-century British architecture. We think the label is fair, with one qualification. Earlier figures had used Gothic elements in their architecture, at Horace Walpole's Strawberry Hill and in James Wyatt's various Gothic Revival buildings. What Pugin added was the serious theoretical and practical foundation that made Gothic Revival a major nineteenth-century architectural style. He led the early movement and wrote its principles down, and his influential churches and the Palace of Westminster put them into practice.
How did Pugin view the Middle Ages?
Pugin viewed the medieval period as morally, aesthetically, and socially superior to modern Victorian Britain. One pair of drawings from "Contrasts" (1836) sums it up: a medieval almshouse caring humanely for the poor, beside a prison-like Victorian workhouse. Medieval Catholic society and its Gothic architecture, he argued, produced human flourishing that modern Protestant industrial society had destroyed, and he idealized the period to argue strongly for Catholic Gothic revival. The view reached John Ruskin and William Morris, and beyond them the broader Victorian medievalism that shaped the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the Arts and Crafts Movement.
What buildings did Augustus Pugin design?
Augustus Pugin designed many churches across England and abroad (including Saint Chad's Cathedral in Birmingham, St Giles' Church in Cheadle, Saint Augustine's Church in Ramsgate, and many others), country house additions (including major additions to Alton Towers in Staffordshire for the Earl of Shrewsbury), the new Palace of Westminster interior decoration and the clock tower (in collaboration with Sir Charles Barry), and his own home The Grange in Ramsgate. Count the churches alone and you're into the dozens in England. Decorative arts ran alongside all his career, from furniture and metalwork to stained glass and textiles. Wallpaper and book design came from him too.
What is Pugin's theoretical writing?
Pugin's most important theoretical writings include "Contrasts" (1836, comparing medieval and modern architecture and society), "The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture" (1841, articulating his Gothic Revival design principles), "An Apology for the Revival of Christian Architecture in England" (1843), and "Glossary of Ecclesiastical Ornament" (1844). Why do they still get read? Mostly for his two design principles ("no features about a building which are not necessary for convenience, construction, or propriety; all ornament should consist of enrichment of the essential construction of the building"), which became foundational to nineteenth-century architectural theory and anticipate modernist functionalism.
When did Augustus Pugin die?
Augustus Pugin died on September 14, 1852, at his home The Grange in Ramsgate, Kent, at age 40. The cause is still unsettled. Mercury poisoning from medical treatment is one theory, and some recent scholarship suggests syphilis. Others put it down to plain mental and physical exhaustion from his extraordinary work intensity. Severe mental illness marked his final months. He's buried in the crypt of Saint Augustine's Church in Ramsgate, the Catholic church he had built next to his house, and his son Edward Welby Pugin continued his father's architectural practice.
