In 1665 Sir Christopher Wren travelled into France, and about the same year was one of the commissioners for the reparation of St. Paul; and in September the same year drew up a model for rebuilding the city of London after the fire in the beginning of that month. Upon the decease of Sir John Denham, who died in March 1668, he was made Surveyor-general of his Majesty’s works. In 1669, he finished the magnificent theatre at Oxford, April the ninth 1673, he resigned his professorship of astronomy at Oxford, and some time after married the daughter of Sir Thomas Coghill of Bletchington in Oxfordshire, by whom he had only one son named Christopher. His wife dying in childbed, he afterwards married Jane daughter of William Lord Fitz-Williams, Baron of Lifford in Ireland, by whom he had two children, a son William, and a daughter Jane. In 1680 he was chosen president of the Royal Society. He was one of the commissioners of Chelsea college, and twice member of parliament, first for Plymouth in Devonshire, in 1685; and in 1700, for Melcomb Regis in Devonshire. In 1718 he was removed from his place of Surveyor-general. He died February the twenty-fifth 1723, in the ninety-first year of his age, and was interred in the vault under St. Paul’s. He was the author of several treatises on different subjects. Amongst the works of architecture of his designing are the cathedral of St. Paul’s, the churches of St. Stephen Walbrook and St. Mary le Bow, the Monument, the palace of Hampton court, Chelsea college, and Greenwich hospital, &c. an account of all which see under their several names in this work.
Wrestley’s court, London wall.†
Wright’s rents, 1. Barnaby street, Southwark.† 2. Ratcliff highway.†
Wright’s street, Rotherhith.†
Wright’s yard, New Marten’s street, near East Smithfield.†
Wrotham, or Wortham, a town in Kent, twenty-five miles from London, and three miles and a half from West Malling, received its name from the great quantity of the herb wort, which grows near it. It has a very large church, in which are sixteen stalls supposed to have been made for the clergy who attended the Archbishops of Canterbury, to whom the manor formerly belonged, and who had a palace here, till Simon Islip the Archbishop in the fourteenth century, pulled it down, and built another at Maidstone; the rectory is however still reckoned one of the best livings in Kent. It has a market on Tuesdays.
Wych street, Drury lane.
Wych’s court, Wych street.†
Wynam’s court, Great Russel street.†