Old St. Paul’s is the name by which the building destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666 is usually distinguished. All that is left of it may be traced within the railings on the south side of the present cathedral. The original church of Alfred and his successors perished in 962, and the new building then set up was burnt in 1136. Old St. Paul’s may be said, therefore, to date from the middle of the twelfth century, but it was continually being altered and added to until 1633, when it was completed by the construction of a magnificent portico at the west end by Inigo Jones. The spire seems to have been the tallest in Christendom, rising 520 feet to the eagle and cross, which contained a portion of the true cross. It was finished in 1498, but was burnt in 1561 and never rebuilt. The nave and choir each contained twelve bays united by a wide transept. The arches of the nave and transept were Norman, of the east end pointed, a great rose window terminating the Chapel of St. Mary, and overlooking the west end of Cheap, on which it encroached. The Corinthian pillars of the portico did not look incongruous with the Romanesque nave and the similar little church of St. Gregory which stood on the south side. The western towers, one of which was described as the Lollard’s Tower, were low but massive. A bell tower was at the east end of the churchyard until Sir Miles Partridge won it “at one cast of the dice,” says Dugdale, from Henry VIII., and pulled it down. The famous Paul’s Cross, where public sermons were preached, stood on the north side of the choir, and a chapel, or charnel house, near it, “having under it a vault, wherein the bones taken out of sundry graves in that cemetery were, with great respect and care decently piled together.” This chapel had a warden and an establishment of priests. Another similar chapel was in “Pardon Church Yard,” a little to the westward, and had a cloister painted with the Dance of Death, with “English verses to explain the meaning, translated out of French by John Lydgate, a monk of St. Edmond’s Bury,” says Dugdale. Over the cloister was a library. Another cloister, of which some relics remain, was on the south side of the nave and was built in 1332, together with a chapter-house. This building occupied the site of a garden, south of which, between the church and Paul’s Wharf, was a tilt yard, used by Lord Fitzwalter for drilling the City Trained Bands. It is marked for us by Paul’s Chain and Knightrider Street. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the doctrine of masses for the dead attained a great height, and it is believed that at least one hundred mass priests attended daily at St. Paul’s. Churches were no longer built in the City but chantries multiplied everywhere, especially after the Black Death in the middle of the fourteenth century.
The church was very full of monuments. Some were shrines of legendary saints, among which may be reckoned the supposed tombs of King Sebert and Bishop Erkenwald, both held in great veneration. What Becket became at Canterbury, the canons tried to make of Erkenwald at St. Paul’s, and the shrine was covered with gold and precious stones. There were many relics, including the arm of Mellitus, and most of the oblations seem to have been preserved in the north aisle of the choir till Henry VIII. sent them in cart loads to the Jewel Tower. (More may be read on the subject in Sparrow Simpson’s St. Paul’s and Old City Life.) The monuments included many chantries with altars, no fewer than seventy-three being enumerated in the fourteenth century. The cost may be estimated by what Dr. R. Sharpe tells us. A bequest of twenty-five shillings secured three hundred masses. There were thirty-five of these altars at the Reformation, employing only fifty-four priests owing to a movement for uniting them, and there were fifty-four obits. The mass priests and their dissolute lives had, no doubt, much to do with the welcome accorded in London to the reforms of Henry VIII. and Edward VI. Among the finest monuments were those of John of Gaunt; Sir John Beauchamp, which was usually called Duke Humphry’s; and of many of the bishops, including Bishop William Kemp, Chishull, and others. After the Reformation many “marble hearses” of great size and magnificence were erected, among others to Dean Colet, Sir William Hewit, Sir Nicholas Bacon, Sir William Cokain, the earl and countess of Pembroke, William Aubrey, John Wolley, Sir Thomas Heneage, and especially to Sir Christopher Hatton, the largest in the church. Fragments still survive of some of them, and the curious effigy of Dean Donne (d. 1631), rising like an Arabian genie from an urn, has been repaired and stands in the south aisle of the choir.
The Fire of 1666 broke out on the 2nd September among the bakers’ shops in Pudding Lane, a thoroughfare of Eastcheap answering to Bread Street in Westcheap. It reached St. Paul’s on the 3rd, and is briefly described by Pepys on the 7th as “a miserable sight,” the roofs destroyed, “the body of the quire fallen into St. Fayth’s.” Evelyn speaks of the scaffolds which were up for the repairs as hastening the ruin, and of the melting lead running down the streets in a stream. He specially laments the loss of Inigo Jones’s portico—immense stones calcined, ornaments, columns, capitals of massy Portland stone flying off. “The lead over the altar at the east end was untouched and among the divers monuments the body of one bishop remained entire.”
Wren, after the Fire, found St. Paul’s completely ruined. The marble portico was reduced to a heap of lime; the roofs had fallen in; the choir had sunk. Nearly all the monuments had perished; and an attempt by Dean Sancroft and the canons to repair a portion at the west end only added to the general destruction. Nevertheless, it was not till June 21, 1675, that the first stone was laid of a new cathedral. Various experiments had been made in the meanwhile, but they only demonstrated the untrustworthy character of the foundations. Contrary to what we often hear about the mediæval builders, it was abundantly evident that here their moving principle had been to produce the greatest effect by the cheapest means, stability being everywhere sacrificed to show. The King, Charles II., and his brother, afterwards James II., hindered Wren’s work in many ways, design after design being rejected as not suitable for the Romanist worship they secretly hoped to re-establish. Wren at length obtained leave to proceed with his task, but one of the models he had prepared is still to be seen in the triforium. Many other causes interfered to check the work, and it was long after both the kings, as well as their successor, Queen Mary II., were dead, in 1697, that the choir was ready for use. A celebration of the Peace of Ryswick took the place of any form of consecration, such as would now be thought needful, and the building was completed in most essential particulars by 1718, when Wren was superseded by a wholly incompetent architect named Benson, chiefly remembered as building the unfortunate balustrade with which he endeavoured to dwarf Wren’s dome. Wren had already been overruled as to the decoration of the dome. Benson was dismissed in 1720. A silly story is constantly repeated as to St. Paul’s having been completed by one architect, under one bishop, and with one clerk of the works. But Bishop Henchman was in office when Wren began his work, and was succeeded by Compton in 1675, who saw the choir finished. After him, in 1713, came Robinson, who was still in office at the time of Wren’s death. It was under this bishop that Wren was dismissed and subsequently Benson, and a third architect, Robert Mylne, came in. So, too, several clerks of the works were employed, among whom we may name Thomas Strong, who died in 1681; his brother, Edward, who died in 1723; and Christopher Kempster, who seems to have been told off by Wren to build St. Stephen, Walbrook, which even more than St. Paul’s commemorates the genius of the great architect. Kempster himself was the architect of the market-house at Abingdon, often attributed to Inigo Jones; he died in 1715.
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ST. PAUL’S CATHEDRAL
It is well, if possible, to approach St. Paul’s from the west. When it comes into sight from the end of Fleet Street, the dome is seen to advantage, rising clear of surrounding buildings on the top of a hill. In this respect it surpasses the only cathedral church in England which can be compared to it, namely Salisbury, which stands on low ground. If we compare it with Lincoln or Durham we miss the magnificent central feature. The dome competes, especially in a city, very successfully with a spire. As we approach Ludgate Hill, the tower of St. Martin, 158 feet high, offers a measure to the eye—the needlessly ugly railway viaduct interfering much less than was feared at first. From Ludgate the two western towers, supporting the double portico, are well seen, and are esteemed as among the best of Wren’s compositions. The towers, of which the southern carries the clock and the great bell, are 220 feet high. The whole west front, as seen from the entrance of St. Paul’s Churchyard, is 180 feet in height and the same in width. The lower pillars of the portico are 40 feet high. The statue in the front was sculptured by Francis Bird in 1712, mutilated by a lunatic in 1743, and restored a few years ago. Between it and the steps, an inscription, cut in the granite pavement, commemorates the fact that here the aged Queen Victoria gave public thanks for the sixty years of her reign in 1897.
The exterior of the church shows two orders, the lower Corinthian, and the upper, what Wren described as “a Composition.” In the tympanum over the portico is a relief by Bird representing the conversion of St. Paul, and on the pediment above are statues of St. Paul between St. Peter and St. James. The railing, now removed from the front, is of iron, cast at Lamberhurst in Sussex. The plan of the cathedral is cruciform, the transepts north and south ending with graceful semicircular porticoes. The east end has a semicircular apse. The cupola, which, as Gwilt says, rises from the body of the church “in great majesty,” should be seen from near the statue of Peel in Cheapside. A fountain within the rails marks the site of Paul’s Cross. From the south a fine view can be obtained from the little garden in which the foundations of the cloisters and chapter-house have been uncovered. The gilt cross is 365 feet above the pavement. The colonnade round the dome is of the composite order, consisting of 32 pillars standing on a circular pedestal 20 feet high and 112 feet in diameter. The columns are not in pairs as at St. Peter’s, but are placed at regular intervals, every fourth intercolumniation being filled with masonry. A sense of stability is thus gained without any sacrifice of lightness.
The best idea of the interior will be obtained by entering at the west end. The great central door is only opened on state occasions; but by either side door we find ourselves in a vestibule with the morning chapel on the north and the consistorial court, which has been made a chapel of the order of St. Michael and St. George, on the south. The carved oak screens should be observed. At the entrance of the nave are fine bronze candelabra. The nave consists of three bays clear, which we enter from the vestibule. There are side aisles, the full width being 102 feet. The height of the central aisle is 89 feet. Beyond the nave, which is 340 feet long, we see the area under the dome, 112 feet across. Beyond this, the choir extends eastward 140 feet. A screen is seen behind the communion table, beyond which in the apse there is a chapel. The screen, erected from the designs of Messrs. Bodley and Garner in 1888, takes the place of a baldacchino, which Wren is said to have intended. The whole length from the west door to the apse is 500 feet. The transept from the north door to the south is 250 feet long, or half the length, and this simple proportion occurs throughout the building; but the western towers are two-thirds the height of the cupola, being exactly double the height of the adjacent roofs. The windows are 12 feet wide and 24 feet high; the aisles are 19 feet in clear width by 38 feet in height. The vestibule is a square of 47 feet and 94 feet high. So, too, the space under the dome, which is 108 feet wide, is 216 feet high.
The side aisles lead to the dome and transepts by an ingenious but simple plan, which Wren is believed to have adapted from that of Ely Cathedral. The inner dome appears very high when we stand under it, but it hardly rises above the colonnade of the outer dome. A cone of brick-work which interposes between the outer and the inner dome carries at its apex the ball and cross. The ball is 6 feet 2 inches in diameter, but it is only to be attained by a long ascent from the whispering gallery, 200 feet above the pavement. A curious echo may be remarked here. Above the whispering gallery an ascent of 108 steps, some 70 feet, takes us to the stone gallery, formed by the balustrade round the external base of the dome, from which a fine view of the far-reaching City may be obtained. A winding and difficult stair leads under the outer dome to the golden gallery, about 100 feet higher, and a farther climb of 45 feet is needed before we reach the ball, within which six people may be seated. The best external view is from the golden gallery.