(b Richmond [now in London], 7 Sept 1876; d Florida, 26 June 1956). Australian architect of English birth. He was articled to Edmerton and Gabriel, London, and he studied at the Architectural Association School, the Polytechnic and Central Arts and Crafts School, London (1892–6), under W. R. Lethaby and E. S. Prior. He began practice at Bognor Regis in 1897, and there built The White Tower (1898) in a style influenced by C. F. A. Voysey. Ordained an Anglican priest, he went as a curate-architect to rebuild churches after a hurricane in the Bahamas (1909–11), where he discovered Spanish Mission architecture. He then became a Franciscan priest and went as a missionary to Geraldton, Western Australia. Between 1915 and 1939 he designed a number of convents, presbyteries and churches in the region, using local materials and building much of the work with his own hands. Hawes was a romantic: based on Arts and Crafts principles and vernacular eclecticism, his work was distinguished by a powerful expressionism and interiors with mysterious lighting. The façade of his masterpiece, the Cathedral of St Francis Xavier (1916), Geraldton, was based on Californian Franciscan missions. Appointed Diocesan Architect in Perth, he also produced a design (unrealised) for Perth Cathedral in 1922. In 1937 he received the title of Monsignor and in 1939 left to become a hermit on Cat Island, Bahamas, where he was known as Fra Jerome and worked as a secular priest–architect.

• Hawes, John Cyril
  • Australia, §II, 2(i): Architecture, after c 1900: Federation and the emergence of Modernism