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Tuesday, 23 February 2016

Sir Christopher Wren



Sir Christopher Wren, famed as the architect of St Paul’s Cathedral, was born at East Knoyle, Wiltshire, on 20th October 1632. He was the only surviving son of Dr Christopher Wren, the local rector who would later become Dean of Windsor, and his wife Mary.

His early life

After education by private tutors, including his father, he entered Wadham College, Oxford, in June 1650 and graduated with a BA in 1651 and an MA in 1653. Wadham College was known for its strength in mathematics and natural science, and its warden, John Wilkins, was one of the circle of scientists who would later found the Royal Society. Wren was greatly influenced by Wilkins, and the two men worked together on building an astronomical telescope after Wren had become a fellow of All Souls in 1653.

In 1657 Wren was appointed to the chair of astronomy at Gresham College in the City of London and in February 1661 he became Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford University. Wren was active in many mathematical and scientific projects, including research in optics and experiments in printmaking, surveying, navigation and other fields.

Wren played an important part in the foundation of the Royal Society (he helped to draw up its royal charter) and his name thus became known to King Charles II.

In 1661, in an unofficial capacity, he gave advice on the repairs needed to old St Paul’s Cathedral, which had suffered from decades of neglect. This was his first brush with architecture, having previously declined a commission to oversee the refortification of the port of Tangier, based on his acknowledged status as one of the best geometricians in Europe.

During the early 1660s he developed an interest in architecture that was to take precedence over everything else in his life. Using observation, his skills as a mathematician and physicist, and intuition, he taught himself the fundamentals of architecture and was soon working on important commissions with considerable success.

His most important early commission was for the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford, the circular building that is still used today for university events including degree ceremonies. This innovative building, which was always intended to be multi-functional, avoided the use of internal pillars by using traditional roof carpentry methods. The emphasis on functionality was to be the hallmark of Wren’s architectural style. Other commissions followed, including several for Oxford and Cambridge college buildings.

Plague and fire in London

Wren made his only overseas journey when he spent the period from June 1665 to March 1666 in Paris, where he met some of Europe’s greatest architects and artists, notably the French architect Mansart and the Italian sculptor and architect Bernini. This sojourn meant that not only did he avoid the plague that swept through London in 1665, but he also returned full of ideas for new buildings. In particular, he had a vision of how the crowded and insanitary city of London could be remodelled, were the opportunity to present itself.

As it happened, the fire that raged from the 2nd to the 5th of September 1666 seemed to be exactly that opportunity.  Within two weeks, Wren had produced a comprehensive plan for the reconstruction of London, consisting of broad straight streets radiating from large piazzas, with a new St Paul’s as its most prominent feature. However, there were many things wrong with the plan, not least its immense cost and the requirement for life to get back to normal as soon as possible. It was therefore always a non-starter.

Despite this setback, Wren was involved in some of the initial planning for re-building, as one of the surveyors chosen by the King and the City to deal with immediate practical problems. Wren made important contributions to the legislation that was drawn up to govern the rebuilding, such as the need for new buildings to be constructed from brick or stone rather than timber.

Wren’s chance came a few years later in 1669, when he was appointed by King Charles as Surveyor of the King’s Works. This gave him the status to push his own ideas forward, but the task of rebuilding a whole city depended on a large team of people, and Wren’s personal contribution was therefore limited.

Many important buildings needed to be rebuilt or restored, including around 50 churches and, of course, St Paul’s Cathedral. The degree of variation between the church designs was remarkable, even given the requirement to build churches that suited the Anglican liturgy and which were largely neo-classical in style. One reason for this is that, as mentioned above, Wren worked as the manager of a team, and a number of the designs were those of men such as Robert Hooke and Nicholas Hawksmoor, with Wren merely giving their designs his approval.

That said, the designs that were purely by Wren show his delight in experimenting with innovative shapes and geometries, such as the polygonal St Benet Fink and the complex incorporation of a Latin cross into a rectangular shape, surmounted by a dome, at St Stephen Walbrook.

St Paul’s Cathedral

Wren had already planned to add a dome to the old St Paul’s before it was destroyed by fire, so this was in his mind from the very start of the plan for the new cathedral. However, what we see today was not what Wren originally envisaged, given that the “new” St Paul’s, despite its impressive size, is nothing like as big as Wren’s first concept, or even his second. The plans went through several phases before a final design could be agreed upon, and even this was controversial. One of the abandoned designs takes the form of the “Great Model”, more than six metres long, that can still be seen today.

The opposition to Wren’s plans centred mainly on the dome, which many people regarded as being too “Romish”. Wren exploited every loophole he could to get his own way over the dome, and it cannot be denied that the end result is not what was agreed in the final “warrant design” that had received the royal warrant on 14th May 1675.

Wren simply went ahead by instructing the various workmen to perform their own part of the operation without knowing the overall plan. Nobody therefore knew what the final result would look like, and, by the time it was complete in 1711, it was too late for any objections to be taken on board. Wren’s masterpiece took 36 years to build, and the design was undeniably all his own work.  

Other work

Wren worked on other commissions during the years when St Paul’s was under construction. One of these was for a monument on Fish Street Hill to commemorate the Great Fire, which is the massive column, with an internal staircase, that is simply known today as “The Monument”.

The library at Trinity College, Cambridge, was completed in 1695. This is undoubtedly the most splendid library building in Cambridge and arguably the most elegant of all Wren’s secular designs.

His later life

Wren’s long life covered the reigns of several monarchs, and he continued in royal favour after the death of Charles II in 1685. For William and Mary he rebuilt part of Hampton Court Palace and also transformed a Jacobean mansion into Kensington Palace. His last major secular commission, on which he worked alongside Nicholas Hawksmoor, was the Royal Naval Hospital at Greenwich. Wren produced his final design for the building in 1698.

Wren, who was knighted as Sir Christopher Wren in November 1673, was twice married. His first wife, whom he married in December 1669, was Faith Coghill, who bore him two sons before dying of smallpox in 1675. In February 1677 he married Jane Fitzwilliam, who died in 1680 leaving Wren to care for the two children she bore him.

In his later years Wren came under increasing criticism, mainly as a result of his architectural style falling out of general favour, and he was dismissed from his position as Surveyor of Royal Works in 1718. He died on 25th February 1723 at the age of 90.

Sir Christopher Wren’s legacy is clearly the many splendid buildings that have survived to the present day. Unfortunately, many Wren churches were lost during the “second fire of London” that was the blitz of World War II, but there were also many notable survivors. His greatest legacy will always be St Paul’s Cathedral, the building which occupied the most extensive period of his time as an architect and to which he devoted his best inspiration.

He was buried in the crypt of St Paul’s and a tablet to his memory was laid in the cathedral floor under the central point of the dome. The inscription includes the Latin words “Si monumentum requiris, circumspice”, which translates as “If you seek his monument, look around you”.



© John Welford

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