SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN (p2)
WAS ONE OF THE MOST HIGHLY ACCLAIMED ENGLISH ARCHITECTS IN HISTORY, AS WELL AS AN ANATOMIST, ASTRONOMER, GEOMETER, AND MATHEMATICIAN-PHYSICIST. HE WAS ACCORDED RESPONSIBILITY FOR REBUILDING 52 CHURCHES IN THE CITY OF LONDON AFTER THE GREAT FIRE IN 1666, INCLUDING WHAT IS REGARDED AS HIS MASTERPIECE, ST PAUL'S CATHEDRAL, ON LUDGATE HILL, COMPLETED IN 1710 BORN 30 OCTOBER 1632 EAST KNOYLE, WILTSHIRE, ENGLAND DIED 8 MARCH 1723 LONDON, ENGLAND NATIONALITY: ENGLISH, WESTMAN Part 2 focuses on the building of St. Paul's Cathedral |
Part2
Christopher Wren And The Building of St. Paul's Cathedral
The Building of St. Paul’s
The name Christopher Wren will always be synonymous with St. Paul’s Cathedral. As St. Paul’ comes into view the dome dominates your approach, it dominates the London skyline. When you see it you know there is something special about it. St. Paul’s is the equal of any cathedral on the continent its design and presence worthy of a national cathedral 300 years after its construction it remains one of London’s greatest icons. It cements Wren’s reputation as England’s greatest architect and one of our Great Westmen.
The year 1665 was a year of plague in London. If you survived that year you entered the following year, a year ending in the ominous 666 with some fear and trepidation. The fears were not unfounded, on September 2nd 1666 a fire started in the bakery of Thomas Farriner in the aptly named Pudding Lane near London Bridge. Fires were quite common then and quickly put out. So, when the Lord Mayor of London, Sir Thomas Bloodworth was woken up and told about the fire, he replied “Well, A woman might piss it out!”. However the summer had been very hot and there had been no rain for weeks, so the wooden houses and buildings were very dry, dry as tinder. Once the fire started there was no stopping it. A strong east wind helped spread the flames as they jumped from house to house. The Streets were a narrow rabbit warren maze of wooden Tudor structures so densely packed that roof tops often touched one another.
The fire was finally extinguished on September 6th. The bad news, 4/5ths of London was destroyed, gone. Hundreds of thousands of people left homeless, 13,000 private dwellings destroyed. The good news: The fire burned out most of the black rats and fleas that were spreading the plague.
Many Puritans though saw the Great Fire of London as God’s judgment on the debauchery of the King, and the eighty-seven churches that burned a sign of the LORD’s displeasure at the theological compromise that characterized the monarchy of Charles II.
In 1665 Wren made his one and only trip outside of Britain. He went to France to study the French Renaissance and baroque architecture and perhaps to also escape the plague that had befallen London. The French journey would have significant influence on his work and provided him with a deep source of inspiration. It was in Paris that he met another Great Westman, Gian Lorenzo Berini, the Italian architect and sculptor. Bernini was in Paris to work as an architect for King Louis XIV, to complete work on the royal palace of the Louvre. Not much is known about their meeting other than Wren reviewed Berini’s drawings and the two discussed baroque design.
After the Great fire Wren had drawn up a visionary plan for a new London. His design was typical of 17th-century city planning and called for a combination of radiating avenues and grid-plan streets accented by squares and vistas, but his plan was not accepted. This was mostly due to the fact that the existing property owners wanted to maintain their current property boundaries. A total urban do over was a bridge too far.
In 1669 Wren was appointed Surveyor of The King’s works, the task, rebuild much of London, especially the Old St. Paul’s which was completely destroyed by the fire. Wren was energized by Bernini’s style and was determined to recast St. Paul’s with a crowning dome of his own unique design.
But Wren did not have a free hand, he had to deal with the Royal Commission composed mostly of protestant clergy that had final design approval. In the age of religious conflict the architectural style of a church took on both religious and political significance. The catholic church was funding classical designs on the continent and wishing to avoid the semblance of anything papist the commission favored a more traditional Gothic style. After all the old St. Paul’s was a Gothic cathedral, stunning and majestic in its own right.
To persuade the commission to approve his own design Wren built a scale model of his grand vision. The Great Model as it was called is the original cathedral design proposal designed by Wren. the model was made by William Cleere to 1/25 scale. The model was also intended to be a permanent record in case of an accident to the architect and to show, better than only drawings could, how everything fit together.
The model was completed in August 1647 at a cost of about £600, the cost of a good London house.
The design was rejected. In the ensuing negotiations Wren prepared several designs for a new cathedral, but from his point of view they were all severely compromised. King Charles II approved one of these compromised designs by a royal warrant signed on May 14, 1675. The warrant commended the design for being ‘so Ordered that it might be built and finish’d by parts’, beginning with the choir. Five days later the Building Committee ordered work to start on the foundations of this design, However, by the time the first contracts were agreed upon with the two master masons, (Joshua Marshall and Thomas Strong), Wren had extended the area of construction. He had also departed from the Warrant design in the relative widths of the central and outer aisles, in the dimensions of the crossing piers, and in the thicknesses of the outer walls. Wren was determined to build St. Paul’s more in the style of his Grand Model utilizing his own unique combination of Neoclassical, Gothic, and Baroque design elements. The warrant design be damned. The original Great Model survives to this day and is on display in the trophy room of St. Paul’s.
The existing foundation of the Old St. Paul’s were in tatters and could not be used. Wren would have to dig new foundations, a decision that would prove nearly calamitous some 20 years later. As construction trudged on over the years the foundations laid 20 years earlier bagan to sink unevenly. Any more weight and the building could collapse. In the original design the dome was a single massive piece of massive weight upon which the 850 ton lantern was to be supported. But all this weight would now be too much for the foundation to now bear, Wren feared a structural failure. He had to reduce the weight of the dome. He could use a double skinned dome as was the fashion in Italian renaissance cathedrals but a such a design would not support the weight of the lantern. The lantern would rival the one on top of St. Peter’s in Rome, Wren was determined to keep it. But What to do?
Remember Wren’s old school boy friend Robert Hooke. Hooke was now famous in his own right for his scientific work in the development of microscopes, chemistry, physics, and mathematics. Hooke developed an idea from his study of hanging chains. Hanging under their own weight chains form what we today call a catenary arc. If weighted in the center the chain forms more of a conic shape. Hooke thought these shapes would provide the best structural performance for an arch. And he was right. In collaboration with Hooke Wren designed something totally knew, an architectural triple dome. The outer dome was fabricated from timbers and the roof thinly lined with lead. The inner dome was of thin masonry, light in weight. The inner dome was for show, to be spectacularly painted. Both inner and outer dome were in the catenary shape of a hanging chain but inverted to form an arch. They bore very little weight. The third dome was placed between the inner and outer dome in the shape of an inverted weighted chain. This hidden inner dome was made of brick and carried all the weight and was hidden from view.
It was all a daring gamble, but the foundations held. It took 35 years to build St. Paul’s, by this time the 76 year old Wren was too frail to be hoisted to the top of the dome to lay the final stone. In 1708 as Christopher Wren watched, his son was hoisted to the top of the dome to lay the final stone. The result, magnificent. St. Paul’s immediately became the dominating feature of the London skyline.
The last years of Wren's life were not happy. His supervision of the Office of Works became haphazard, and in 1718 he was dismissed, retaining only his surveyorship at St. Paul's and at Westminster Abbey. Christopher Wren died in London on Mar 08, 1723. He is entombed in the crypt of St. Paul’s. His epitaph in Latin reads: Reader, if you seek a monument, look around you. Having altered the warrant design, the foundations of the old st Paul’s no longer matched the foot print of the new design. The old foundation had completely settled and compacted the earth below it. It was completely stable. But Wren was determined to have his classical design.
Over 300 years after its construction St. Paul’s remains one of London’s greatest icons. A must see on any visit to London. It cements Christopher Wren’s reputation as England’s greatest architect and one of our Great Westmen. wRenaissance is a term that aply describes the finger print Wren has left upon London.
Christopher Wren And The Building of St. Paul's Cathedral
The Building of St. Paul’s
The name Christopher Wren will always be synonymous with St. Paul’s Cathedral. As St. Paul’ comes into view the dome dominates your approach, it dominates the London skyline. When you see it you know there is something special about it. St. Paul’s is the equal of any cathedral on the continent its design and presence worthy of a national cathedral 300 years after its construction it remains one of London’s greatest icons. It cements Wren’s reputation as England’s greatest architect and one of our Great Westmen.
The year 1665 was a year of plague in London. If you survived that year you entered the following year, a year ending in the ominous 666 with some fear and trepidation. The fears were not unfounded, on September 2nd 1666 a fire started in the bakery of Thomas Farriner in the aptly named Pudding Lane near London Bridge. Fires were quite common then and quickly put out. So, when the Lord Mayor of London, Sir Thomas Bloodworth was woken up and told about the fire, he replied “Well, A woman might piss it out!”. However the summer had been very hot and there had been no rain for weeks, so the wooden houses and buildings were very dry, dry as tinder. Once the fire started there was no stopping it. A strong east wind helped spread the flames as they jumped from house to house. The Streets were a narrow rabbit warren maze of wooden Tudor structures so densely packed that roof tops often touched one another.
The fire was finally extinguished on September 6th. The bad news, 4/5ths of London was destroyed, gone. Hundreds of thousands of people left homeless, 13,000 private dwellings destroyed. The good news: The fire burned out most of the black rats and fleas that were spreading the plague.
Many Puritans though saw the Great Fire of London as God’s judgment on the debauchery of the King, and the eighty-seven churches that burned a sign of the LORD’s displeasure at the theological compromise that characterized the monarchy of Charles II.
In 1665 Wren made his one and only trip outside of Britain. He went to France to study the French Renaissance and baroque architecture and perhaps to also escape the plague that had befallen London. The French journey would have significant influence on his work and provided him with a deep source of inspiration. It was in Paris that he met another Great Westman, Gian Lorenzo Berini, the Italian architect and sculptor. Bernini was in Paris to work as an architect for King Louis XIV, to complete work on the royal palace of the Louvre. Not much is known about their meeting other than Wren reviewed Berini’s drawings and the two discussed baroque design.
After the Great fire Wren had drawn up a visionary plan for a new London. His design was typical of 17th-century city planning and called for a combination of radiating avenues and grid-plan streets accented by squares and vistas, but his plan was not accepted. This was mostly due to the fact that the existing property owners wanted to maintain their current property boundaries. A total urban do over was a bridge too far.
In 1669 Wren was appointed Surveyor of The King’s works, the task, rebuild much of London, especially the Old St. Paul’s which was completely destroyed by the fire. Wren was energized by Bernini’s style and was determined to recast St. Paul’s with a crowning dome of his own unique design.
But Wren did not have a free hand, he had to deal with the Royal Commission composed mostly of protestant clergy that had final design approval. In the age of religious conflict the architectural style of a church took on both religious and political significance. The catholic church was funding classical designs on the continent and wishing to avoid the semblance of anything papist the commission favored a more traditional Gothic style. After all the old St. Paul’s was a Gothic cathedral, stunning and majestic in its own right.
To persuade the commission to approve his own design Wren built a scale model of his grand vision. The Great Model as it was called is the original cathedral design proposal designed by Wren. the model was made by William Cleere to 1/25 scale. The model was also intended to be a permanent record in case of an accident to the architect and to show, better than only drawings could, how everything fit together.
The model was completed in August 1647 at a cost of about £600, the cost of a good London house.
The design was rejected. In the ensuing negotiations Wren prepared several designs for a new cathedral, but from his point of view they were all severely compromised. King Charles II approved one of these compromised designs by a royal warrant signed on May 14, 1675. The warrant commended the design for being ‘so Ordered that it might be built and finish’d by parts’, beginning with the choir. Five days later the Building Committee ordered work to start on the foundations of this design, However, by the time the first contracts were agreed upon with the two master masons, (Joshua Marshall and Thomas Strong), Wren had extended the area of construction. He had also departed from the Warrant design in the relative widths of the central and outer aisles, in the dimensions of the crossing piers, and in the thicknesses of the outer walls. Wren was determined to build St. Paul’s more in the style of his Grand Model utilizing his own unique combination of Neoclassical, Gothic, and Baroque design elements. The warrant design be damned. The original Great Model survives to this day and is on display in the trophy room of St. Paul’s.
The existing foundation of the Old St. Paul’s were in tatters and could not be used. Wren would have to dig new foundations, a decision that would prove nearly calamitous some 20 years later. As construction trudged on over the years the foundations laid 20 years earlier bagan to sink unevenly. Any more weight and the building could collapse. In the original design the dome was a single massive piece of massive weight upon which the 850 ton lantern was to be supported. But all this weight would now be too much for the foundation to now bear, Wren feared a structural failure. He had to reduce the weight of the dome. He could use a double skinned dome as was the fashion in Italian renaissance cathedrals but a such a design would not support the weight of the lantern. The lantern would rival the one on top of St. Peter’s in Rome, Wren was determined to keep it. But What to do?
Remember Wren’s old school boy friend Robert Hooke. Hooke was now famous in his own right for his scientific work in the development of microscopes, chemistry, physics, and mathematics. Hooke developed an idea from his study of hanging chains. Hanging under their own weight chains form what we today call a catenary arc. If weighted in the center the chain forms more of a conic shape. Hooke thought these shapes would provide the best structural performance for an arch. And he was right. In collaboration with Hooke Wren designed something totally knew, an architectural triple dome. The outer dome was fabricated from timbers and the roof thinly lined with lead. The inner dome was of thin masonry, light in weight. The inner dome was for show, to be spectacularly painted. Both inner and outer dome were in the catenary shape of a hanging chain but inverted to form an arch. They bore very little weight. The third dome was placed between the inner and outer dome in the shape of an inverted weighted chain. This hidden inner dome was made of brick and carried all the weight and was hidden from view.
It was all a daring gamble, but the foundations held. It took 35 years to build St. Paul’s, by this time the 76 year old Wren was too frail to be hoisted to the top of the dome to lay the final stone. In 1708 as Christopher Wren watched, his son was hoisted to the top of the dome to lay the final stone. The result, magnificent. St. Paul’s immediately became the dominating feature of the London skyline.
The last years of Wren's life were not happy. His supervision of the Office of Works became haphazard, and in 1718 he was dismissed, retaining only his surveyorship at St. Paul's and at Westminster Abbey. Christopher Wren died in London on Mar 08, 1723. He is entombed in the crypt of St. Paul’s. His epitaph in Latin reads: Reader, if you seek a monument, look around you. Having altered the warrant design, the foundations of the old st Paul’s no longer matched the foot print of the new design. The old foundation had completely settled and compacted the earth below it. It was completely stable. But Wren was determined to have his classical design.
Over 300 years after its construction St. Paul’s remains one of London’s greatest icons. A must see on any visit to London. It cements Christopher Wren’s reputation as England’s greatest architect and one of our Great Westmen. wRenaissance is a term that aply describes the finger print Wren has left upon London.