Architectural Archive

The Architectural Archive contains the papers and drawings created by the Surveyor to the Fabric and related drawings by consultants, contractors, artists and designers.

St Paul’s Cathedral is an exceptionally well-documented historic building and the architectural archive charts the history of the design, construction, decoration and maintenance of the present cathedral designed by Sir Christopher Wren. The original drawings by Wren and his draughtsmen are held at London Metropolitan Archives while the building accounts, contracts and records of the Rebuilding Commission are held in the cathedral’s deposited collections at Guildhall Library. The Wren office drawings are currently being reappraised and catalogued by architectural historian Dr Gordon Higgott and will be published on the cathedral’s website in 2012.

The Surveyors' Papers held in the on-site architectural archive at St Paul’s date primarily from the surveyorship of Francis Cranmer Penrose (Surveyor, 1852–1897) to the present day and record the structural changes and decorative embellishments to the Cathedral during this period. These include the decoration of the interior and the addition of mosaics and stained glass windows during the second half of the nineteenth-century, the extension and re-arrangement of the choir, the structural reinforcement of the dome and dome piers during the 1920s, the post-war reconstruction and redesign of the bomb-damaged east end, north transept and Chapter House, and more recent works including the interior cleaning project.

The archive also includes designs by some very famous names, such as the eighteenth-century English history painter, Sir James Thornhill, the nineteenth-century architectural partnership of Bodley and Garner, Nazarene illustrator Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, architect and Surveyor to Westminster Abbey Stephen Dykes Bower, twentieth-century sculptors William Reid Dick and John Skelton, and stained glass designer Brian Thomas.

The records demonstrate the working relationships between St Paul's and the artists commissioned to embellish the historic interior and are complemented by the Cathedral's larger hanging collections and models, which include designs by Alfred Stevens, William Burges, FC Penrose, William Blake Richmond and Mervyn Macartney.

Search or browse the Online Catalogue

For enquiries relating to the architectural archive please contact Architectural Archivist