London - St Paul's Cathedral

The word Cathedral is from the Latin ‘cathedra’ meaning seat since this is where the Bishop’s seat or throne was placed.  This asserted his authority to act in the name of the Church in this area.  

A church dedicated to St. Paul’s has stood on this site for over 1,400 years!!

History maintains that King Ethelbert of Kent was the first English king to convert to Christianity.  It was his influence that began the foundations for Canterbury Cathedral and St Augustine’s Abbey, and helped open a doorway into pagan London for Mellitus – the first Bishop of London.  He founded St Paul’s in 604 AD.  We are not sure what those early buildings were like, but they served their purpose until William the Conqueror arrived to build a new church 483 years later.

In 1087 William’s chaplain, Bishop Maurice, began building a much grander home for Christian worship.  This cathedral grew and grew and by 1666 was huge – even dwarfing the current Cathedral.    The old cathedral was 75 feet (22.86m) longer and 124 feet (37.80m) higher than what we see today.   If you look in the pavement of the south churchyard you will find floor plans of the two cathedrals superimposed on each other. 

All these cathedrals, up to this point, were Catholic.  Then, when Henry VIII broke the religious connection with Rome, this became the property of the Church of England.   Catholic shrines, relics and images were destroyed mainly under the direction of London’s first Protestant Bishop, Nicholas Ridley.  He himself was destroyed a few years later when Queen Mary briefly returned England to Catholic rule, but when her sister Elizabeth came to the throne the Cathedral became Protestant again and has remained so ever since. 

The Great Fire                 

By the 1600s the grand medieval church was in a bad state of repair, and sometimes Londoners were quite careless with their treatment of this sacred space.  Traders with wagons and goods found it far more convenient to travel with their horses and beasts right through the old church rather than travelling all the way around, and merchants were known to trade in the thoroughfare.   Such negligence was threatening the very fabric of the building.

In 1633 Inigo Jones was commissioned to restore the cathedral, but improvements dried up during the days of the Republic, when Oliver Cromwell ruled.  The clergy were dismissed, and the building used as a barracks including stabling for hundreds of horses.  When the monarchy returned in 1660 King Charles II supported a pressing need for further renovation. 

Things needed to change, but no one was quite prepared for the impact of the Great Fire of London in 1666.  That year is one of those dates that just about every English school child will know.    It was a pivotal moment in the history of London.  It was not the first time that St. Paul’s had suffered from fire - flames destroyed it around 675 AD, again in 1087, and damaged it in 1133,  but this fire was very different.  Some 13,200 houses were destroyed and five-sixths of the City disappeared in flames.   Luckily only around six people are known to have died, but around 70 to 80,000 Londoners were made homeless overnight. 

In the fire’s wake, came the chance to re design and re think the City.   Some saw this as an opportunity to start the city anew with wide and straight avenues, grand promenades, and clear vistas. 

Clearly that did not happen as the homeless masses and displaced merchants could not wait around for some grand plan to materialise.  Landowners just went about rebuilding homes and businesses on the same sites along the same streets. 

Christopher Wren                         

The Great Fire provided Sir Christopher Wren (1632-1723) with a unique opportunity to build churches at an impressive rate.   Before the fire you would have seen a sea of 107 medieval churches just within the square mile of the city.  85 of those were destroyed.   34 of them were never rebuilt, but Wren was in charge of rebuilding the other 51. 

Where else could you be asked to rebuild 51 churches in such a short period of time – it would be every architect’s dream to be given such a clean slate. 

A special tax (1670) was placed on coal to provide funds for the rebuild – that tax remained in place for 47 years (1717).  A third was used for the churches, a third for St. Paul’s and a third for street developments.    

Wren often used the medieval foundations and surviving lower walls of the churches as his base, but what arose from them was something quite remarkable.  Each church had its own identity, and over the next sixteen years he was free to experiment with domes, towers, spires, steeples, fonts, pulpits and balconies.   He had an army of masons, carvers, blacksmiths, and ironworkers at his disposal.

Plus it allowed the more open plan approach of the Church of England to be imprinted on churches that had been very Catholic in their adopted building fabric.    Wren insisted that “all who are present can both hear and see” whereas the Catholic attitude had been content to “hear the Murmur of the Mass”.   

Today, due to world war bombings and ‘progress’ only 24 of Wren’s 51 churches survive, but they provide us with a great sense of his versatility and skill. 

As wonderful as these churches are, it is Wren’s work on St Paul’s that is his most lasting legacy. 

The Cathedral took thirty three years to complete (1675-1708), and Wren was able to see it through from start to finish.  He is buried in the south-east corner of St. Paul’s crypt.  His plain plaque declares,  “Reader, if you seek his monument – look around you.”  (Si monumentum requiris, circumspice.)

This is an excerpt from the FREE tour St Paul's Precincts found on www.obelisktours.co.uk