ST PAUL’S CATHEDRAL
Christopher Wren, 1670–4
The Bold and Original Cathedral that Sir Christopher Wren Really Wanted to Build
In every crisis there is an opportunity. In 1666, London faced the biggest crisis of its history: the great fire that destroyed much of the city from the Tower of London in the east to the Temple area in the west. Houses, shops, inns – mostly timber-framed buildings and many with thatched roofs – were laid low. Dozens of churches, even though they had stone walls, were beyond repair. And the great medieval Cathedral of St Paul was very badly damaged.
In this disaster the architect Christopher Wren saw the biggest opportunity of his career. Hardly was the fire out before he was designing a plan for a rebuilt city, a beautiful Classical layout with new streets and squares. The plan was rejected: property owners objected to the necessary relocations and rejigging – they wanted to waste no time getting back into business, at their accustomed addresses, where customers could be sure to find them. However, Wren won the commission to design fifty new churches. Meanwhile, the cathedral was patched up so that services could resume.
Old St Paul’s had been built between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, and was extended in the later Middle Ages. Like most English cathedrals, it was a long, cross-shaped building. It had a tall, central spire, which dominated the London skyline. By the early 1600s, the building had fallen into disrepair, so the architect Inigo Jones had restored it, adding an entrance portico with Classical columns at the west end. The old cathedral was, therefore, in a mixture of architectural styles, but in essence it was a medieval cathedral, with rows of arches, large stained-glass windows and a longitudinal plan. It was very traditional.
By the end of the 1660s, it was becoming clear to the cathedral authorities that the old, patched-up cathedral would need rebuilding. They wrote to Wren requesting a new design, and he set to work, proposing a cathedral in the Classical style, with Roman columns, semicircular arches and a dome instead of a spire. This first design was quite small and it was rejected as too modest. As Wren puts it, some people thought the design ‘was not stately enough, and contended, that for the Honour of the Nation, and City of London, it ought not to be exceeded in magnificence, by any Church in Europe’. In addition, the cathedral authorities had scope to be more ambitious, because in 1670 a new Rebuilding Act allocated more money for the new cathedral.
So Wren began again, this time proposing a design planned like a Greek cross, with short arms and a large, central dome. The heart of the building is a vast space under the central dome. At the west end is a vestibule, itself roofed by a smaller dome. The whole effect of this centralized plan was quite unlike the elongated churches that were traditional in England. But as Wren developed the design in detail, it seemed to work. The king, Archbishop Sheldon and Dean Sancroft approved, and the job of demolishing Old St Paul’s progressed – with the aid of dynamite and, when the explosions and flying masonry alarmed the people living nearby, a battering ram.
At last, in 1673, Wren was officially appointed architect, charged with directing the construction of the new building and answerable to a Royal Commission, whose members included numerous bishops and archbishops together with the Lord Chancellor, the Lord Treasurer and representatives of the City of London. As a further seal of approval, at the end of the year, Wren was knighted.
A key clause in Wren’s agreement with the Commission was that he should produce a model of the new cathedral to act as a reference for the architect and builders. The model is made in wood and to a large scale, some 201/2 ft (6.3m) long and 12ft (3.6m) high – not for nothing has it been known ever since as the Great Model. This enormous wooden construction is a triumph in itself – it is beautifully made by a team led by joiner William Cleere. The exterior is immaculately finished, showing to advantage the high, concave-curving walls with their Classical details and the enormous dome rising above them. The vestibule at the west end of the building is the main entrance. It is fronted by a portico with a row of gigantic Corinthian columns – as grand an entrance to a major building as could be. There are also entrances in the north and south facades – these provide a focus for the sides of the building as well as improving circulation.
The interior of the model is no less impressive, giving a sense of the truly cavernous space within the building. The choir is in the eastern arm of the building, with the congregation assembling in the huge space beneath the dome and spreading out into the north and south arms of the structure. The interior details are painstakingly represented in the model – craftsmen were paid for carving some 350 capitals, a plasterer was employed and gilders made the architecture still richer.
Wren must have been very pleased but the Commissioners were not. When they saw the model they had cold feet, particularly the clergy, who felt that the design was too foreign, too popish and just not traditional enough. They were also concerned that the structure would take too long to build – they wanted to resume services as soon as possible. With a conventional building, it was possible to build and roof the choir and start using it while construction of the nave went on beyond a temporary partition. When almost the whole building was beneath a vast dome, it couldn’t be used until the dome was finished. The Commissioners demanded a rethink.
So the Great Model design, which Wren thought his best work and which had been hailed as a future glory for the capital, was never built at full size. It remains a reality only in Wren’s drawings and Cleere’s magnificent version in wood. Devastated, Wren went away and produced an alternative design, known now as the Warrant Design, which the Commissioners accepted. Compared to the Great Model, a design of great purity, the Warrant Design is a bizarre collection of disparate parts, an elongated building with a dome that turns into a spire halfway up. But for all its oddity, the Commissioners approved and Wren went ahead.
However, St Paul’s did not end up like the Warrant Design. When the plan was accepted, Wren secured an agreement that he could alter the design as he went along. He took full advantage of this, changing the design of the dome radically and modifying the west end to create the entrance front that is so familiar today. The finished St Paul’s is still a compromise between a centralized domed building and the elongated plan preferred by the clergy, but it is a compromise that works and that has become the most famous church in Britain and a symbol for London. The Great Model remains in the cathedral as a reminder of the purer, more radical design that might have been.
