On the night of Sept 2 1666 a small fire started in the shop of the king’s baker in Pudding Lane. Fanned by a strong wind, the fire soon became an uncontrollable inferno, and for four days the fire raged through the close packed streets and wooden houses of London. Although only eight lives were lost almost four fifths of the city was completely destroyed, this included 13 000 buildings, 89 churches, 52 company halls and old St. Paul’s Cathedral.
With a great deal of the city completely destroyed, one to make the most of a bad situation was a young architect named Christopher Wren, who almost immediately submitted plans to the king for the redesign of the city. Christopher Wren was born in Wiltshire, England in 1632. He attended Wadham College, Oxford in 1649 as a Gentleman Commoner. At Oxford he joined a group of brilliant scholars, who later formed the core of the Royal Society. As assistant to an eminent anatomist, Wren developed skills as an experimental, scientific thinker. With astronomy as his initial area of study, Wren developed skills in working models, diagrams and charting that proved useful when he later entered architecture. Wren became the Gresham Professor of Astronomy in London in 1657, at the age of twenty-five. Four years later he became the Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford. Aside from a keen interest Wren had no real hold on the world of architecture until 1663 when his uncle, the Bishop of Ely, asked him to design a new chapel for Pembroke College, Cambridge. This, his first foray into architecture, was quickly followed by more commissions.
Even before the fire Wren had had designs on the planning and design of the city and in particular the old cathedral, only four months before he had undertaken a report on how unstable St. Paul's had become, which by calamity and coincidence was abruptly proven correct by the Great Fire. Within days of the fires end Wren presented a visionary plan to King Charles II for turning the crowded shambles of Stuart London into a sunlight city blessed with wide avenues and open plazas. The drawing out of such plans would undoubtedly have taken may hours and Wren’s promptness must not only indicate the speed in which he was able to attack such a problem but also the degree of forethought about the planning of cities believed to be inspired by trips to the European continent and cities such as Rome and Paris. Wrens plans would turn London form the ragged overpopulated mess into a modern, cultured and beautiful city, Wrens desires for such development reflected the competition between the major countries of Europe in everything they did. The new city would not only be a modern masterpiece of city planning and design but would be a strong symbol to other countries that the English too were very cultured high class in their management of their capital.
The enthusiastic Charles, a childhood friend of wren’s, liked his designs but lacked the money to commission them, and the impatient Londoners had already began to rebuild along the old street patterns. Instead wren was commissioned to rebuild the cities churches, including St. Paul’s. This indeed was still a great honour for Wren to receive. Cathedrals have always played more than one role in the communities they serve beyond their central purpose of bringing people closer to God. Over the centuries they have served as a focal point for trade, as fortresses and sanctuaries in times of war, and as vast status symbols – reflections of wealth and power of the region in which they stand. These functions take on an additional significance for the new St. Paul’s, the cathedral of the capital city and of the whole nation. The new building was also to be the first cathedral to have been built since the creation of the Church of England in 1534. This building had to be a symbolic reflection of the time, and the power and integrity of the Church of England after the movement from central religious leadership in Rome years earlier.
An indication of the time is well illustrated with the power still held by the church and clergy members even though true power lay with the King, a number of Wren’s designs for the cathedral were rejected without hesitation, reasons given included the designs being too modern or too Italian, the clergy would have what they wanted or nothing at all. The church at this time was of great importance and influence, Wren would have to meet their requirements first before any building took place.
Finally in 1675 Wren gave the clergy what they wanted; a traditional English church design with a long nave and spire. However, his good fortune showed true again when the king granted Wren a royal warrant approving this design which also included an interesting proviso that the architect was free to make ‘variations, rather ornamental than essential’. As this was written we can almost imagine the architect’s old friend giving him a sly wink. Much can be taken from this factor about the state of play at that time, where if one held favour in high places a great advantage was to be had in whatever field became interesting. There is no doubt Wren was a great architect but at the same time we cannot help but think it was not a case of what you know but indeed who. In the basest estimation Wren was a brilliant intellectual with friends in high places and a great deal of good luck.
On the strength of the royal warrant Wren proceeded to quietly change just about every essential element of the design the clergy thought they were getting. Much of the work was done behind scaffolding and prying eyes so that by the time the furious clergy realised what Wren had done it was too late to be altered.
Wren’s final building was indeed a great work, a masterpiece of neo-classical architecture. The triple-layered dome that crowns the cathedral is still the second largest in the world. Which to this day completes a skyline regarded as one of the worlds most famous. Other major features include the Whispering Gallery, so named because a whisper breathed against one wall is audible against the far wall 112 feet away. Following the great disasters the country had so recently endured the entire nation need a common reason to celebrate and be proud of their country, the design of a cathedral which was to serve not only the capital but by extension the whole of the country would have top be something special indeed, and it was.
When stone was laid for the centre of the new building, stones from the old St. Paul’s were used again. Wren noticed one of the stones had been inscribed with the Latin ‘resurgam’, ‘I shall rise again’. He had the word inscribed on the pediment of the south door beneath a carved phoenix. I believe this to be a very poignant and significant metaphor for St. Paul’s and not only that but the city as a whole. London had come through a lot and survived to flourish and grow as a major city once more. The re-emergence of the city was a historic point in the countries collective heritage and culture, and the new cathedral became the exclamation that although there were many troubles before the people and city had come through it and deserved some recognition.
"St. Paul's, the largest cathedral in England, is Wren's masterpiece. With it, he brought a repertoire of new forms (the dome, for example) and architectural combinations into English architecture. The building is something of an encyclopaedia of Wren's impressions of the architecture of the continent... Wren fashioned the façade of St. Paul's with two tiers of paired Corinthian columns like those of the Louvre and framed them between towers inspired by those of Borromini's Roman church of S. Agnese. Above the two-story base rises a tremendous peripteral dome that reinterprets Bramante's Tempietto of 1502. Pietro da Cortona's projecting curved porches of Santa Maria della Pace have become St. Paul's transept porches."
‘Architecture’ Wren had written ‘aims at eternity’. As a young man he had looked into the heavens, first with the naked eye and then through the lens, and had believed that he understood something of the order and mystery of what he saw. With the completion of St. Paul’s in his later life, Wren must have been able to see something of that order and mystery in the shapes he himself had raised towards the sky, but not only for himself but as a crowned celebration of the triumphs of the time and symbol to the people of hope, and the rest of the world of the strength of England.
Bibliography.
Downes, K 1982 Sir Christopher Wren
Downes, K 1982 The Architecture of Wren
Trachtenberg, M 2002 Architecture: from prehistory to post modernity
Warner, S A 1926 St. Paul’s Cathedral
Hart, Vaughan 1995 St. Paul’s Cathedral: Sir Christopher Wren
Brett-James, Norman G 1935 The Grown of Stuart London
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