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Explore our site

Exhibition: Saving St Paul's: The Watch and the Second World War

a silhouette of a male figure wearing a hat against a background of St Paul's bell tower

Exhibition: Saving St Paul's: The Watch and the Second World War

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couple reading service schedule during consecration service

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Ways to donate

choristers boys sharing candle light christmas

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Our digital resources

Rowan Williams smiling as he leafs through his book at an event at St Paul's Cathedral

Our digital resources

Stories from St Paul's podcast

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Stories from St Paul's podcast

Sources and abbreviations

Fig. 5. The Bishop's Throne at the east end of the south range of stalls. Carved by Grinling Gibbons, 1696–9

The Wren Office Drawings

Sources and abbreviations

Burman 2004: Peter Burman, 'Decoration, furnishings and art since 1900', in Keene, Burns and Saint 2004, pp.258-68

Campbell and Bowles 2004: James W.P. Campbell and Robert Bowles, ‘The construction of the new cathedral’, in Keene, Burns and Saint 2004, pp.207–19

Campbell 2007: James W.P. Campbell, Building St Paul’s (London: Thames & Hudson, 2007)

Colvin 2008: Howard Colvin, A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600–1840, Fourth Edition (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008)

Downes 1988a: Kerry Downes, The Architecture of Wren (Reading: Redhedge, 1988)

Downes 1988b: Kerry Downes, Sir Christopher Wren: The Design of St Paul’s Cathedral (London: Trefoil Publications, 1988)

Downes 1979: Kerry Downes, Hawksmoor (London: Zwemmer, 1979; 1st edn 1959)

Downes 1994: Kerry Downes, ‘Sir Christopher Wren, Edward Woodroffe, J.H. Mansart, and architectural history’, Architectural History 37 (1994), pp.37–67

Du Prey 2000: Pierre de la Ruffinière du Prey, Hawksmoor’s London Churches: Architecture and Theology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000)

Esterly 1998: David Esterly, Grinling Gibbons and the art of carving (London:V & A Publications, 1998) 

Geraghty 2000: Anthony Geraghty, 'Nicholas Hawksmoor and the Wren City Church Steeples', The Georgian Group Journal, 10 (200), pp.1-14

Geraghty 2001: Anthony Geraghty, 'Edward Woodroofe: Sir Christopher Wren's first draughtsman', The Burlington Magazine, 143 (2001), pp.474-79.

Geraghty 2007: Anthony Geraghty, The Architectural Drawings of Sir Christopher Wren at All Souls College Oxford: A Complete Catalogue (Aldershot: Lund Humphries, 2007)

Geraghty 2011: Anthony Geraghty, 'Nicholas Hawksmoor's Drawing Technique og the 1690s and John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding', in Helen Hills (ed.), Rethinking the Baroque (Farnham:Ashgate, 2011), pp.125-41

Gerbino and Johnston 2009: Anthony Gerbino and Stephen Johnston (eds), Compass & Rule: Architecture as Mathematical Practice in England (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009)

GL MS: Guildhall Library, London: Manuscript collection

Hart and Hicks 1996: Vaughan Hart and Peter Hicks, Serlio on Architecture, Volume I: Books I-V of "Tutte l`opere d`architettura et prospetiva” (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996)

Higgott 2004a: Gordon Higgott, ‘The Fabric to 1670’, in Keene, Burns and Saint 2004, pp.171–90

Higgott 2004b: Gordon Higgott, ‘The Revised Design for St Paul’s Cathedral, 1685–90: Wren, Hawksmoor and Les Invalides’, The Burlington Magazine, 146 (2004), pp.534–47

Higgott 2009: Gordon Higgott, ‘Geometry and Structure in the Dome of St Paul’s Cathedral’, in Gerbino and Johnston 2009, pp.155–69

Jacob 2004: W.M. Jacob, ‘History, 1714–1830’, in Keene, Burns and Saint 2004, pp.71–83

Jardine 2002: Lisa Jardine, On a Grander Scale: The Outstanding Career of Sir Christopher Wren (London: HarperCollins, 2002)

Keene, Burns and Saint 2004: Derek Keene, Arthur Burns and Andrew Saint, St Paul’s, The Cathedral Church of London 604­–2004 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004)

Lang 1956: Jane Lang, Rebuilding St. Paul’s after the Great Fire of London (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956)

Little 1975: Bryan Little, Sir Christopher Wren: A Historical Biography (Robert Hale: London, 1975)

McPhee 2002: Sarah McPhee, Bernini and the Bell Towers: Architecture and politics at the Vatican (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002)

Miller 2000: John Miller, James II (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000)

Morrogh 2010: Andrew Morrogh, ‘Guarino Guarini and Christopher Wren’, in M. Beltramini and C. Elam (eds), Some degree of happiness: Studi di storia dell’architettura in onore di Howard Burns(Pisa: Edizione della Normale, 2010), pp.507–30.

Newman 2004: ‘Fittings and Liturgy in Post-Fire St Paul’s’, in Keene, Burns and Saint 2004, pp.220–32

Parentalia 1750: Christopher Wren, Parentalia; or, Memoirs of the Familyof the Wrens (London, 1750; repr. Farnborough: Gregg Press Ltd, 1965)

Poley 1927: Arthur F. E. Poley, St Paul's Cathedral, Measured, Drawn and Described (London, 1927)

Roscoe 2009: Ingrid Roscoe, with Emma Hardy & M.G. Sullivan, A Biographical Dictionary of Sculptors in Britain 1660–1851 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009)

Schofield 2011: John Schofield, St Paul’s Cathedral Before Wren (Swindon: English Heritage, 2011)

Sladen 2004: Teresa Sladen, ‘Embellishment and Decoration, 1696–1900’, in Keene, Burns and Saint 2004, pp.233–57

Stancliffe 2004: Martin Stancliffe, 'Conservation of the Fabric', in Keene Burns and Saint 2004, pp.293-303

Summerson 1953: John Summerson, Sir Christopher Wren (London: J.M. Dent, 1953)

Summerson 1961/1990: John Summerson, ‘The Penultimate Design for St Paul’s Cathedral’, The Burlington Magazine 103 (1961), pp.83–89; republished with slight changes and a postscript in John Summerson, The Unromantic Castle and other essays (London: Thames & Hudson, 1990), pp.81–103

Summerson 1990: John Summerson, ‘J.H. Mansart, Sir Christopher Wren and the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral’, The Burlington Magazine 132 (1990), pp.32–36

Summerson 1993: John Summerson, Architecture in Britain, 1530-1830, 9th edn, (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993)

Whinney 1971: Margaret Whinney, Wren (London: Thames & Hudson, 1971)

Wren Society: The Wren Society, ed. A.T. Bolton and H.D. Henry, 20 vols (Oxford, 1924–43)

The drawings

2.1.1 Great Model - Lead Image - Ref 8851

1. Designs for the Great Model, 1673

Wren’s unrealised Great Model, now in the Cathedral’s Trophy Room, took about ten months to design and more than a year afterwards to build and decorate.

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Fig. 7. St Paul’s Cathedral. South elevation and half-plan as built, showing the main phases of construction from 1675 to 1688 (Richard Lea and Gordon Higgott)

2. The Design in the First Phase, 1675-85

After the rejection of the Great Model in the latter part of 1674, Wren prepared several designs for a new Cathedral on a cruciform plan.

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Fig. 1. ‘The Revised design’: South elevation, drawn by Hawksmoor, c.1686 (© All Souls College, Oxford, G.81)

3. Upper elevations and west end, c. 1685

The dramatic increase in funding from 1686 was the main factor behind a major revision to the design that can be dated from mid-1685.

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Fig. 6. Robert Trevitt's engraved view of the choir at a thanksgiving service attended by Queen Anne, 31 December 1706 (© City of London, London Metropolitan Archives)

4. The Choir and Morning Prayer Chapel, 1693-97

The design, construction and decoration of the choir enclosure and sanctuary occupied Wren and his assistants at least four and a half years.

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Fig. 1. Engraving of the north elevation, probably by Simon Gribelin, c.1687–88, with cut-outs from a later engraving of the finished dome (St Paul’s Cathedral, SP105)

5. Designs for the Dome, c. 1685-1710

Wren’s revisions to the design in 1685–86 created a podium for a vast, richly modelled Dome, inspired by those of Michelangelo’s St Peter’s in Rome and Jules Hardouin-Mansart’s Invalides church in Paris.

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2.9.1 WRE_6_1_5 (D143)_Lead image

6. The western towers, c. 1685-1710

Wren had always intended a belfry in one of the towers at the west end of the Cathedral.

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Fig. 3. Study by Hawksmoor in half-elevation, section and plan, for a mausoleum-like rotunda on the west side of the piazza, c.1696–97 (WRE/7/1/3)

7. Churchyard and paving and miscellaneous drawings, c. 1690-1713

The earliest known scheme to improve the Cathedral churchyard is an outline study by Wren and Hawksmoor, drawn over a survey of the whole precinct prepared by William Dickinson. 

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