Sir Christopher Wren

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By Temple Ligon

 

Friday at 6:00 p.m., October 10 at 2225 Terrace Way, there will be a lecture on the work of Sir Christopher Wren, England’s most famous architect. Wren grew up knowing the future King Charles II, so when London burned to the ground in 1666, Wren was at the right place at the right time, knowing the right guy.

His father Rector Christopher Wren Sr. in 1635 became dean at Windsor Cathedral, where Wren Jr., born in 1632, got in good with the future king. After earning his BA (1651) and his MA (1653) at Oxford, Wren became a professor of astronomy at London’s Gresham College.

Meanwhile England had gone through turmoil, beginning with the outbreak of the English Civil War (1642), the execution of King Charles I (1649), and the triumph and the rule by Oliver Cromwell. In 1660 the throne was restored by Charles II, Wren’s childhood friend.

Also in 1660, as part of his Gresham College presence, Wren initiated formal weekly meetings, called the Wilkins Circle, and after two years proposed a society with the king’s charter. Thus the Royal Society was founded. Wren was its president (1680-82), and from 1702 until 1727 their president was Sir Isaac Newton, the greatest brain in history.

Philosopher John Locke, also born in 1632, joined the Royal Society while he was writing Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina with Anthony Ashley Cooper, head of the Lords Proprietor of Carolina. Charleston was founded in 1670, but Locke’s work was never adopted. The colonists preferred the loose language and general flexibility of the king’s charter. Still, it’s entertaining to imagine the discussions among the members of the Royal Society in the late 1660s. After all, Carolina was the biggest land deal at the time, and popular topics then (and now) always included the biggest land deal. While Locke was putting together governmental structure for Carolina, he was running it by his buddies at the Royal Society, the most enlightened minds in the empire

Wren’s career track began in mathematics and astronomy, mostly, but he was also a physician, like Locke. Wren’s first opportunity to design a building was in 1663, Pembroke College at Cambridge. Next he scored a commission at Oxford to design the Sheldonian Theatre, where he based his design layout on the Theatre of Marcellus in Rome. In 1665 he visited Paris and he studied drawings by the great Baroque architect from Italy, Bernini. Paris was well ahead of London architecturally in the 1660s – learning from the Italians, especially.

The Great Plague hit London in late 1664 and before 1666 maybe 200,000 in greater London were dead from the bubonic plague.

Then, in 1666, the Great Fire hit London, when most of the city burned, leaving at least one-third of its population homeless.
Wren was already working on the new St. Paul’s even before the Great Fire. He was an early favorite to win the commission following the Great Fire. All told, Wren was commissioned to design replacements for 52 churches lost in the Great Fire. All the new 52 were able to get right on it thanks to a tax on coal to cover the costs.

Wren had redesigned London’s street plan for its recovery, but the property owners were more interested in getting back to business and less concerned with what Wren had learned by studying the street plan of Rome for the Christian pilgrimage of 1600; and the king wanted to get back to taxing the same interests, so the London street plan stayed pretty much what it was before the Great Fire. For fire considerations the streets became wider, and brick and stone became required materials. And in a great leap forward in city comfort, open sewers were banned. The rebuilding of London took 10 years, and St. Paul’s was finished in 1710, 36 years after construction began, which was quick when compared with the typical 100 years to build a Gothic cathedral. Even today, St. John’s in New York City and the National Cathedral in Washington each has taken about a century to finish.

Among Wren’s better known works beyond the churches is the Great Fire Monument (1676), marking the spot where the fire started. He finished the Royal Observatory in Greenwich the same year. His Trinity College at Cambridge was finished in 1684. Chelsea Hospital opened for business in 1692, and his Greenwich Naval Hospital was occupied in the late 1690s. Former home to Prince Charles and now Prince William, Kensington Palace was finished by Wren in 1696; and Hampton Court, 1700.

At the end of the 17C, supposedly, Wren designed an administration building for the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg. Jamestown was a complete failure from just about the day it started in 1607, and by the end of the century it had to be torn down. The entire island became a farm. The capital moved to Williamsburg where William and Mary started as America’s second oldest college, oldest being Harvard, started in 1636.

Wren never came to America, but somehow Williamsburg claims his building. Since they can’t prove it, the next best thing in attribution is to name the building for the presumed architect; so in Williamsburg at the College of William and Mary, do drop by to see the Sir Christopher Wren Building.

 

 

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