St Pauls Cathedral
This year is the 300th anniversary of the death of Christopher Wren, a name forever associated with one of the capital’s greatest architectural masterpieces, St Paul’s Cathedral. The story of how St Paul’s rose from the ashes of the Great Fire of London in 1666 is well known: Wren’s final design, completed after 35 years in 1710, was preceded by three earlier proposals, turned down because they were at first too modest (1670)… then too modern (1673)… and finally too traditional (1675). The completed building bears little resemblance to the approved plan!
But Wren was so much more than the designer of the London icon, he was also responsible for over 50 other churches that were built, altered or rebuilt after the Great Fire, and a further four elsewhere outside the City, plus a host of civic buildings. The variety is truly spectacular – and well worth exploration during a lunchtime or two in the city. They range from St Mary Aldermary, one of Wren’s rarer buildings built in the Gothic style, to St Mary Abchurch, where a host of cherubs and angels look down from its painted dome onto the congregation and a spectacular wooden altarpiece by Grinling Gibbons below.
