Showing posts with label cathedral. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cathedral. Show all posts

October 20 - Happy Birthday, Sir Christopher Wren

 Posted on October 20, 2021


This is an update of my post published on October 20, 2010:





Born on this day in 1632, Sir Christopher Wren is one the most famous architects in history. He is responsible for designing more than 50 churches in London, after the Great Fire in 1666, including his masterpiece, St. Paul's Cathedral.


Wren was a polymath (learned in many subjects), noted for his knowledge or contributions to astronomy, geometry, and mathematics as well as architecture. Intellectual superstars such as Sir Isaac Newton and Blaise Pascal spoke highly of his scientific work.

St. Paul's took 36 years to built and boasts one of the largest domes in the world. It was the tallest building in London from the time it was finished in 1710 until 1962!



St. Paul's was targeted during the German bombing of London during World War II (the Blitz), and although buildings all around it were destroyed, remarkably, it survived. (The cathedral was struck by two bombs that did not destroy it, and a third time-delayed bomb would have utterly destroyed it if it had not been defused and removed by the bomb disposal unit of the Royal Engineers!)


Um...Wow!
St. Paul's Cathedral survived the blitz!


St. Paul's Cathedral is well worth a visit! One thing I remember about my visit was the Whispering Gallery. This is reached after climbing many stairs up to the dome. If one person whispers against the wall at any point in the dome, the whisper can be heard by a listener with an ear held to the wall at any other point around the gallery! Actually, this is true of any dome—if you find yourself in one, try it!

Of course, Wren designed many other important buildings, including hospitals, libraries, and palace buildings.




Learn more about architecture.
ArchKIDecture is a great site to explore! 

And here are some more resources.



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October 30 - Happy Birthday, Christopher Wren

Posted October 30, 2019

On this date in 1632, a baby boy was born England. Even though he had older siblings (including several who died at a very early age), this baby was the first (and, it turns out, only) surviving son in his family; and so, as was the custom, he was given his father's name.

The baby's father, Christopher Wren the Elder, was the spiritual head of Windsor Castle and its chapel. The baby's mother, Mary Cox, was the only child of the Cox family, and she inherited all of her family's wealth.

Because of that wealth, that baby boy was able to grow up to be a highly educated man, including studying at Oxford University. Christopher Wren's fields of accomplishment include anatomy, astronomy, meteorology, physics, optics, ballistics, geometry and other fields of mathematics. Wow!


But none of that is what made Christopher Wren most famous. Instead, he is best known for architecture.

As a matter of fact, Wren is one of the most respected English architects in all of history!

Among the buildings Wren designed are buildings for two colleges and a palace front. After the Great Fire of London, in 1666, Wren was given the responsibility of rebuilding 52 churches! Of course, he didn't do all of the creative and architectural design for all those churches; other architects working under Wren's supervision did some. One that was all Wren is considered his masterpiece:

St. Paul's Cathedral!


St. Paul's is located at the highest point in London, and it has featured large in the London skyline for more than 300 years. For two and a half centuries, it was the tallest building in London, and its WWII image among all the smoke and wreckage from Nazi bombing is especially famous - it's so remarkable that it wasn't destroyed during the Blitz, like so many buildings that neighbored it! (The cathedral was hit twice, but luckily the damage was repairable.)



St. Paul's is the second largest cathedral (in area) in the United Kingdom, and its dome is one of the highest in the world. 

Prince Charles and Princess Diana got
married at St. Paul's. Her train was 25 feet
long, and her veil was 153 yards!!!
St. Paul's has been the location of many very important ceremonies - weddings, funerals, celebrations - but it's also a working church with daily services.




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June 4 – Lightning! Fire! Church Steeple Destroyed!

Posted on June 4, 2018


I'm lucky enough to say that I've been to St. Paul's Cathedral in London. And it doesn't look like this: 



What I didn't realize, as I read that St. Paul's steeple burned down on this date in 1561, was that there was a St. Paul's Cathedral built in London over the course of centuries from 1087 to 1314....an entirely different St. Paul's than the one I had visited, which was built on the same spot as "Old St. Paul's Cathedral."

This is the one I visited:



 

Old St. Paul's was actually the fourth Christian church built on that site (so the St. Paul's that exists now is the fifth!), and when it was built it was considered one of the longest churches in the world, with one of the tallest spires in the world.

This spire is not, of course, on
Saint Paul's, but as I said in the
article, a lot of towns have church
steeples and spires as their
highest point - and so steeple
or spire lightning strikes and fires
were pretty common before
the adoption of lightning rods!
Do you know what lightning tends to strike? The highest point. So it's not terribly surprising that lightning sometimes strikes church spires. In this case, the lightning caused the spire to catch fire and crash through the nave roof. It was hot enough that the cathedral bells melted and "poured down like lava." 

What do you do when part of a building is destroyed? You fix it, of course. Queen Elizabeth was England's ruler at that time, and she contributed money toward the repairs, but apparently the re-roofing job was not done very well, and the spire wasn't rebuilt at all. Just 50 years later, the new roof was looking dangerous.
It doesn't look nearly as nice without the spire, does it?

At that point King James I was in charge. He appointed architect Inigo Jones to restore the building, but I gather that Jones didn't fix all of the problems. Instead, his main
contribution seemed to be adding a Classical-style portico that didn't really go with the rest of the architecture.


The English Civil War
was the noble, pro-king
Royalists against....
...the commoners,
the Parliamentarians
who were often called
the Roundheads.
And then the Civil War broke out. I am not (of course) talking about the American Civil War, but rather the English one (1642 - 1651). During the war, the nave was used as a sort of horse barn, many old documents were lost or destroyed, and the ruler after the war, Oliver Cromwell, was rumored to be planning to give the Old St. Paul's to the Jewish community, to be used as a synagogue.

But...Cromwell died, the monarchy was restored, and Sir Christopher Wren was appointed to restore the cathedral as well. He was supposed to make the cathedral safe again AND to make it match better with Jones's portico, but Wren said that the whole cathedral should be demolished and a new cathedral built. He pointed out that the original building wasn't built all that well and that the repairs were very poorly done.

Many people - clergy and London citizens alike - disagreed with the idea of demolishing the Old St. Paul's and starting from scratch, but then the Great Fire of London broke out, in 1666, and way more of the church burned than in that spire fire a century before.

So...Wren got his way. The old cathedral was demolished, Wren had a free hand to design the cathedral from the ground up, and he created a masterpiece...




...that miraculously lasted all through the German bombings of World War II! 





Londoners found St. Paul's to be a beacon of hope as the Nazi blitz went on and on...



St. Paul's ended the war with only slight damage. And it is a really cool place to visit even today!


Also on this date:



































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