Wren office drawings

WRE

1673–1752

Sir Christopher (1632–1723) Wren, Edward (c.1622–1675) Woodroofe, Unidentified draughtsman (fl.1675–c.1687), Nicholas (c.1662–1736) Hawksmoor, Edward (1652–1724) Strong, Edward (c.1635–1695) Pearce, Unidentified mason-draughtsman (fl. c.1678–c.1690), Unidentified draughtsman associated with the west end and dome (fl. c.1685–91), c.1685 Unknown draughtsman associated with the west end, Unknown Wren office hand, Grinling (1648–1721) Gibbons, Caius Gabriel (1630–1700) Cibber, Simon (1661–1733) Gribelin, William (1671–1725) Dickinson, Unidentified draughtsman associated with Edward Strong (fl. c.1706–07), John (1673–1746) James, Henry (1697–1769) Flitcroft

226 drawings

{\rtf1\ansi\ansicpg1252\deff0\deflang2057{\fonttbl{\f0\fswiss\fprq2\fcharset0 Microsoft Sans Serif;}{\f1\fswiss\fprq2\fcharset0 System;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue128;} \viewkind4\uc1\pard\cf1\f0\fs20 A catalogue of the drawings by Sir Christopher Wren and his office in the Cathedral's Collections, held at London Metropolitan Archives and at St Paul's, by Dr Gordon Higgott.\par \par The St Paul\rquote s Collection of Wren-office drawings is unrivalled as a record of the design and construction of a single great building by one architect in the early modern era. Consisting of 217 drawings for St Paul\rquote s dating between 1673 and 1752 (nine others, catalogued in the final section, are unconnected with the building), the Collection was originally part of a much larger corpus. This included 67 drawings now in the Wren Collection at All Souls College, Oxford, and a single plan at Sir John Soane\rquote s Museum in London. The whole corpus is only a fraction of what must originally have existed, for it contains very few executed designs and just one full-sized profile for construction (see WRE/4/2/8), although hundreds - if not thousands - of such drawings must have been made.\par \par It used to be thought that Wren finalised the whole design up to the roofline of the Cathedral before work began on the foundations in June 1675, but recent research on the activities of Wren\rquote s draughtsmen in relation to the main phases of construction has established that he revised the design stage by stage as work moved from one part of the building to the next. In the first phase, up to 1685, Wren planned the Cathedral with equal-length nave and choir arms and single-storey aisle walls. Soon after the accession of James II in 1685, when the Cathedral\rquote s funding was increased, he enlarged the west end and added upper aisle walls (known as \lquote screen walls\rquote ) to create an all-round two-storey elevation beneath a more richly modelled dome, wider and higher than the one he had designed at the start of work. The \lquote Revised design\rquote of c.1685-87 (as it is now known) was partly inspired by what Wren then knew, from drawings and engravings, of Jules Hardouin-Mansart\rquote s domed church of Les Invalides in Paris, begun in 1677.\par \par Between about 1690 and 1695, Wren progressively revised the dome to give the drum a 32-column peristyle and a sloping inner wall; and in about 1702, when construction was halfway up the peristyle, he added a concealed brick cone to support a tall stone lantern above a timber and lead-clad outer dome. Finally, in 1703-04, he revised the lanterns of the western towers to give them a more Baroque form, in contrast with the plainer treatment he had adopted for the outer dome, the covering of which was finished in 1710.\par \par The entire design process depended on close collaboration between Wren and his draughtsmen. Often working in pairs, they produced finished or alternative schemes for his approval and made large-scale working drawings for construction. Amongst them were the master-masons Edward Pearce and Edward Strong, the surveyors Edward Woodroofe and William Dickinson, the engraver Simon Gribelin, the sculptors Grinling Gibbons and Caius Gabriel Cibber, and the future architect Nicholas Hawksmoor, the last being Wren\rquote s most gifted and prolific draughtsman and the only one paid for such work in the building accounts.\par \par The introductions to the seven sections of the catalogue set the drawings in broader contexts and refer to related designs in other collections, notably those at All Souls College, Oxford. They link to the sections of online database (WRE/1-7), sub-sections of which group the drawings by phase, area or subject. Individual entries within these sub-sections explain the date and purpose of each drawing, its place in the process of design and construction, and the hand or hands responsible.\par \par A bibliography, list of abbreviations, introductory essays and key drawings from other collections are published on the Cathedral's website: www.stpauls.co.uk/Cathedral-History/The-Collections/Architectural-Archive/Wren-Office-Drawings\cf0\b\f1\par }

Access to the Wren office drawings held at London Metropolitan Archives is available only with advance notice and at the discretion of the Heritage Services Director, London Metropolitan Archives, 40 Northampton Road, London, EC1R 0HB.