Architect. He is most remembered for his design of the National Portrait Gallery in Saint Martin's Place London, England, built between 1890 and 1895 towards the end of a long career. He was mainly a designer and restorer of churches and was appointed Architect to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners in 1851, an influential position which he held until his death. He became highly respected and very successful in his profession as many written records and studies of him show and rose to become President of the Royal Institute of British Architects from 1884 to 1886. He was also awarded the Institute's Royal Gold Medal in 1887. During his career he carried out hundreds of church restorations throughout England and Wales for the Anglican church and built about ninety new churches. His famous restoration of Southwell Minster in Nottinghamshire, begun in 1851, continued for thirty-seven years. Saint Mark's Church in Leicester, completed in 1872, is considered by many to be his masterpiece and is unusually faced in slate from Charnwood Forest in Leicestershire. He also designed about a hundred and twenty houses, including Market Lavington Manor in Wiltshire, built in the Tudor style in 1865, and carried out extensive work on the old house at Glyndebourne in Sussex for W. L. Christie in 1876. He also built a house for himself in Well Walk, Hampstead in 1881 to 1882 on a prominent site opposite Hampstead Heath and named it after his mother's home village of Thwaitehead in Lancashire. Both of his parents died when he was around seven years old. Though born in London his family connections went back to the Isle of Man where for centuries the Christian family had held the post of Deemster (justice). They had also established large estates in Cumberland. Fletcher Christian, the famous mutineer of HMS Bounty, was another member of the family. From the age of nine the architect attended Christ's Hospital School, first in Hertford and then the main school in Newgate Street, London. On his fifteenth birthday he was articled to the London architect Matthew Habershon. In 1836 he assisted in the office of William Railton, later architect of Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square, London, who was Architect to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners from 1838 to 1848. He then became an assistant in the office of John Brown in Norwich. In October 1842 he set up his own architectural practice at 44 Bloomsbury Square in London. He produced in all over 2,000 works, wrote thousands of reports on buildings and church designs and made many architectural surveys for the Church of England. He also assessed many architectural competitions. He continued these efforts to within four days of his death at the age of 80.