Peter Ackroyd himself declared that the stimulus for Hawksmoor was Iain Sinclair's poem Lud Heat: "I would like to express my obligation to Iain Sinclair's poem, Lud Heat, which first directed my attention to the stranger characteristics of the London churches."[REF]
Sinclair's thesis is that Hawksmoor planned his churches according to a strict "geometry of oppositions" producing a "system of energies, or unit of connection, within the city," similar to those formed by "the old hospitals, the Inns of Courts, the markets, the prisons, the religious houses and the others".