Sir Christopher Wren

by Lawrence Weaver

The story of Wren’s many designs for the new Cathedral is confusing and need not be followed here in detail. The First Design, made before the Fire, has been mentioned. The Second Design, also known as the “Rejected Design” and the “Model Design,” was an attempt to gratify “the taste of the Conoisseurs and Criticks with something coloss and beautiful, conformable to the best stile of the Greek and Roman architecture.”

This was one of several submitted to the King, and was approved by Royal Warrant of November 12, 1673. A model of it was made, now in the South Kensington Museum, and its plan and perspective are reproduced here. It represented a great break from traditional Cathedral treatment. Planned as a Greek cross, to which a short western arm (a vestibule or narthex) was added later, a central space 120 feet in diameter was formed by eight great piers carrying a dome, and the ambulatory included four shallow domes. The octagonal church of Santa Maria della Salute gives perhaps as good an idea as any of the general scope of the scheme, which Sir Charles Barry thought might supply a hint for English church building. The western vestibule was roofed with a smaller dome and finished with a colonnaded portico. It was a noble idea, but the clergy thought it unsuitable for services, and the absence of chapels annoyed the Duke of York, who, with his supporters, still hoped for a restoration of the old religion. Wren had to abandon the scheme, not, it is said, without actual tears. It is recorded in Parentalia that “the Surveyor, in private Conversation, always seem’d to set a higher value on this Design, than any he had made before or since; as what was laboured with more Study and Success; and (had he not been over-rul’d by those, whom it was his Duty to Obey) what he would have put into Execution with more Chearfulness and Satisfaction to himself than the latter.”

Plan of the “Rejected Design.”

About eighteen months passed before the Third Design was submitted to the King and approved by warrant dated May 14, 1675. It is known as the Warrant Design. So unworthy is it of Wren’s genius that his apologists have been ingenious in explaining it away. Miss Phillimore thought it the result of overwork and worry. Loftie believed that Wren was “in the nearest thing to a bad temper of which his meek and quiet spirit was capable,” and pitched it at Charles as a joke, thinking that the King might as well sign the silliest design he could produce as he had rejected a sound scheme. Be that as it may—and it is not very like Wren to play the fool—Charles passed this preposterous design as “very artificial proper and useful,” giving Wren “liberty in the prosecution of his work, to make some Variations, rather Ornamental than Essential, as from time to time he should see proper, and to leave the Whole to his management.” The design now reproduced carries its own condemnation on its face. The western towers and the portico with its single skinny Order were exceedingly feeble, and the crowning of the dome by a kind of parody of St. Bride’s steeple is a feature that is best passed over in silence.

But if it were not simply a lark, it might have been the result of a demand for a spire that should remind London of the glory of St. Paul’s old spire, which had been the highest in Europe.

West Elevation of the “Warrant Design.”

Happily Wren interpreted his permission for ornamental variations by drastic changes in essentials in the elevations, but he did not greatly change the “warrant” plan. His frame of mind may well be judged by the note, which follows the recital of the 1675 Warrant, in Parentalia: “From that time, the Surveyor resolved to make no more Models, or publickly expose his Drawings, which (as he had found by Experience) did but lose Time, and subjected his Business, many Times, to incompetent Judges.” Therefore, just as the present Houses of Parliament grew out of the castle design, done by Barry in 1836, by his twenty years of thought and work, so the grandeur of St. Paul’s developed with the mind of Wren incessantly occupied in its creation for nearly double that time. No one could help him in this gradual evolution of his thought, but many could, and did, obstruct its execution.

The taking down of the vast ruins of the old Cathedral made a heavy task, and Wren took to gunpowder for demolishing the piers of the old central tower. This worked well, but on its second employment by a subordinate, when Wren was out of town, too much gunpowder was used and a stone was blown into a neighbouring house. No bones were broken, but Wren was told to find less desperate methods and achieved his end with “that ancient Engine in War, the Battering-ram.” Wren’s troubles with the foundations made a long and too technical story for so slight a sketch as this, but it is fair to his memory to set down that though some early trouble was experienced from settlements which young Edward Strong, the son of Wren’s master-mason, was called in to repair, the present troubles are due more to the draining of the subsoil by recent engineering works, such as great sewers, and to the use of rubble inside a casing of ashlar, than to any defect in the foundation design. One notable change in the design of the West Front must be emphasised because it marks the influence, in this case the overmastering influence, of material over design. Wren devised the front with a single great Order (as Inigo Jones had done in the portico he added), therein following the scheme of St. Peter’s at Rome. Bramante had quarried at Tivoli pieces big enough for the drums of his columns, but had to spoil his cornices for lack of stones of adequate size. Wren was defeated in his hope of securing drums big enough from the Portland, Rock Abbey, and other quarries, and “for these Reasons the Surveyor concluded upon Portland-stone, and was able to use two Orders and by that Means to keep the just Proportions of his Cornices; otherwise he must have fallen short of the Heighth of the Fabrick, which now exerts itself over all the Country, as well as City, as it did of old, when that Structure, tho’ rude, was lofty and majestick.”