Construction of St. Paul’s

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While the churches were being built, Wren was slowly and painfully evolving designs for St. Paul’s. The initial stage is represented by the First Model of 1670, now in the trophy room at the cathedral. This plan was approved by the king, and demolition of the old cathedral began. By 1673, however, the design seemed too modest, and Wren met his critics by producing a design of spectacular grandeur. A wooden model was made of this, and the Great Model, as it is called, is still preserved at St. Paul’s. It failed to satisfy the canons of St. Paul’s and clerical opinion generally, however, and Wren was compelled to withdraw from the ideal and compromise with the traditional. In 1675 he proposed the rather meagre Classical-Gothic Warrant Design, which was at once accepted by the king, and within months building started.

What happened then is something of a mystery. The cathedral that Wren started to build bears only a slight resemblance to the Warrant Design. A mature and superbly detailed structure began to rise. In 1694 the masonry of the choir was finished and the rest of the fabric well in hand. In 1697 the first service was held in the cathedral. There was still, however, no dome. Building had been in progress for 22 years, and some restless elements in the government seemed to think this too long. As an incentive for more rapid progress, half of Wren’s salary was suspended until the cathedral would be complete. Wren was now 65. Construction was completed in 1710, and in 1711 the cathedral was officially declared to be finished. Wren, 79, petitioned for the withheld moiety of his salary, which was duly paid. The cathedral had been built in 35 years under one architect. (See also Saint Paul’s Cathedral and related classic articles from the 2nd (1777–84) and 3rd (1788–97) editions of Encyclopædia Britannica.)

Concurrent projects

Through all those years Wren was not only the chief architect of St. Paul’s and the City churches but also the head of the King’s Works and thus the responsible officer for all expenditure on building issuing from the royal exchequer. He had an able staff to look after routine maintenance, but much business passed through his hands, including the control of building developments in and around Westminster. About 1674 the University of Cambridge considered building a Senate House for purposes similar to those for which the Sheldonian Theatre had been built. Wren made designs, but the project was abandoned. The master of Trinity College, who had promoted the scheme, was disappointed, but he persuaded his own college to undertake the erection of a new library (1676–84) and to employ Wren to design it. Wren’s classicism here is impressive. There is no hint of the Baroque style prevalent in Europe at the time, and the building could well be mistaken for a Neoclassical work of a century later.

At Oxford in 1681 the dean of Christ Church invited Wren to complete the main gateway of the college. The lower part of Tom Tower, as the gateway was called, had been built by Thomas Cardinal Wolsey in a richly ornamental Gothic style. The octagonal tower that Wren imposed illustrates both his respect for Gothic and his reservations about it. His attitude toward Gothic design was consistent and influenced Gothic construction in England well into the 18th century. In 1682 Charles II founded the Royal Hospital at Chelsea for the reception of veterans superannuated from his standing army. The idea doubtless derived from Louis XIV’s Hôtel des Invalides (1671–76) in Paris, but Wren’s building, completed about 1690, is very different from its prototype. Charles II died in 1685. In the short reign of his brother, James II, Wren’s attention was directed mainly to Whitehall. The new king, a Roman Catholic, required a new chapel; he also ordered a new privy gallery and council chamber and a riverside apartment for the queen. All these were built by Wren but were destroyed in the Whitehall fire of 1698.

There is not much information about Wren’s personal life after 1669. He was knighted in the year of the Great Model, 1673. His first wife died of smallpox in 1675, leaving him with one young son, Christopher (another had died in infancy). His second wife, Jane Fitzwilliam (Fitz William), by whom he had a daughter, Jane, and a son, William, died in 1679. In these years he never wholly abandoned his scientific pursuits. He was still at the centre of the Royal Society and was its president from 1680 to 1682. He was sufficiently active in public affairs to be returned as member of Parliament for Old Windsor in 1680 and, although he did not again take his seat, in 1689 and 1690.

With the Glorious Revolution of 1688, which drove James II from the throne, Wren found himself chief architect to William of Orange. William III and Mary II proved to be the most active builders of them all. They disliked Whitehall Palace, and in 1689 Wren was at work reconstructing two palaces: one at Kensington on the outskirts of London and the other at Hampton Court, 15 miles (24 km) away, up the River Thames. Kensington Palace was a piecemeal conversion of an older house, with new courts and galleries added. It is not a totally satisfactory composition, but the south front is a noble piece of brickwork. Hampton Court Palace, on the other hand, started as a project of huge dimensions—nothing less, in fact, than a rebuilding of the entire palace begun by Wolsey. Wren’s first designs have survived, and in these he is seen, for the first time, spreading his wings as a palace architect. It was decided to demolish only half of the old palace, however, and Wren’s design was reduced considerably. Nevertheless, he brought to it many innovations and a unique use of English building materials. Hampton Court is a mixture of red and brown brick and Portland stone combined in masterly equilibrium.

Queen Mary died in 1694. The king lost heart, and building at Hampton Court was suspended; the palace was not completed until 1699. Two years before her death the queen had initiated a scheme for the building of a royal hospital for seamen at Greenwich. For this Wren made his first plans in 1694. The work began in 1696, but the whole group of buildings was not completed until several years after his death. Greenwich Hospital (later the Royal Naval College) was Wren’s last great work and the only one still in progress after St. Paul’s had been completed in 1710.

Queen Anne granted him a house at Hampton Court. He had, besides, a London house on St. James’s Street, and it was there that a servant, noticing that he was taking an unusually long nap after dinner one evening, found him dead in his chair. Wren was buried with great ceremony in St. Paul’s Cathedral, the tomb covered by a simply inscribed slab of black marble. On a nearby wall his son later placed a dedication, including a sentence that was to become one of the most famous of all monumental inscriptions: “Lector, si monumentum requiris, circumspice” (“Reader, if you seek a monument, look about you”).