cemetery design for memorial monuments, for one temporary frontage scheme (at Mount Auburn Cemetery), and for a gate in a wall of a small non-conformist cemetery in Sheffield). Though use of the style was disapproved of by Augustus Pugin Jnr (1812–52) for departing from western Christian styles, and proved controversial in like-minded quarters, others were impressed with the bold and quite new design at Abney Park and began to conclude that the "Egyptian revival" should be taken further; though mostly for purely stylistic reasons. In 1939 it had also been used by Stephen Geary at the entrance to Egyptian Avenue at Highgate Cemetery and by 1842, two years after Abney Park opened, it was possible for the architect Thomas Wilson, a member of the General Cemetery Company board, to publish the most futuristic cemetery design ever, to be wholly completed in the Egyptian style. His proposal was the Metropolitan Sepulchre, a brick and granite pyramid taller than St. Paul's Cathedral containing nearly a quarter of a million catacombs, on nearly a hundred levels, surmounting Primrose Hill, complete with a public observatory at the top! Regrettably it did not gain the support it needed, and Hosking's Abney Park entrance and Geary's Egyptian Avenue remain the only successful examples of large-scale use of the Egyptian style in cemetery design. Hosking's skills did not just shine through in his careful planning and detailing of Egyptian-revival temple lodges and frontage; he was also commissioned to design a similarly unique and impressive cemetery chapel. This, the Abney Park Chapel was to be the first non-denominational cemetery chapel in Europe, and quite probably the world (since its "sister" chapel at Mount Auburn was a later addition). While not detracting from the magnificence and originality of the grand entrance design, Hosking's chapel had, likewise, to make its mark as a unique design. As with the novel entrance, Hosking met the challenge both with originality and a surprisingly wide knowledge of architecture. Since he had travelled extensively, and had a strong interest in antiquities, he was able to look well beyond traditional British architectural and gothic-revival sources. Further information about his design can be found in the entry for Abney Park Chapel, which is an early example of Dissenting Gothic. Academic recognition and town-planning, 1840–50 Professorship at King's College Hosking's work at Abney Park won important admirers, as well as critics. Its combination of an architectural design approach,