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Dan Snow's History Hit
Christopher Wren
00:45:05
Architect, astronomer, anatomist, and genius who rebuilt London after the Great Fire.
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- [00:00]
Christian Dropo
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Dan Snow
Hi folks. Dan Here I have some very very exc for you. To celebrate our 10th anniversary with you, we are doing a live show of Dan Snow's history hit the first for a very very long time. So please join me on Friday 12th September in London town by popular demand, I'll be retelling the story of the legend, Thomas Cochrane, the goat greatest of all time, the man who inspired the movie Master and Commander. And looking back over 10 years of making this podcast, prime ministers, Oscar winners, World War II veterans, Holocaust survivors and some of the greatest historians in the world. It's a time for me to hang out with you guys and answer any burning questions you may have. So don't miss it. It's going to be an epic party and there is no one I'd rather spend it with. All of you dedicated listeners. You can get tickets at the link in the show notes but hurry because they are selling fast. See you. Welcome everyone. Welcome to Dan Snow's History Hint. If you go to St. Paul's Cathedral in London and you stand right underneath the center of that magnificent dome, you'll find that you're standing on a circle of black marble. And on it is an inscription. It ends, Si monumentum requiris circumspice. The full translation. Here in the foundations lies the architect of this church and city, Christopher Wren, who lived beyond 90 years not for his own profit, but for the public good. Reader, if you seek his monument, look around you. As his epitaph suggests, Wren's monument. Wren's defining achievement was building St. Paul's Cathedral. And it certainly is one of the most magnificent buildings in English history. It is iconic both for its innate beauty, the impact it had on that city at that time, but also in what it's come to mean, what it's come to represent. It became, became, in the 18th century, Britain's imperial temple. It was the burial place of Wellington and Nelson. In the 20th century, it became a talismanic survivor of the Blitz, standing there amidst the ruins, an emblem of London's and Britain's resilience. But as I learn in this podcast, St. Paul's represents only a fraction of what this self taught architectural genius produced. Kensington Palace, Whitehall Palace, Hampton Court, the Naval College, Greenwich, Chelsea Hospital, alongside innumerable churches. The monument to the Great Fire in London. All of these buildings he conceived or closely collaborated in their construction. The monument to the Great Fire of London, monument today, which by the way, was always intended to double, both as a monument to the Great Fire and as a telescope. And that for me brings us to the true wonder of the man. He was not just an architect, albeit he was the greatest architect in British history. He was an astronomer, he was an engineer, he was a scientist. Wren is Britain's Michelangelo. He's our Leonardo. One of his friends, Robert Hook, himself a scientist of genius. He was a close collaborator, worked on architectural projects together, including in fact the monument he wrote of. Since the time of Archimedes, there scarce ever met in one man in so great perfection, such a mechanical hand and so philosophical a mind. Wren was a prodigy, having survived war and becoming a refugee as a child, he went to Oxford. While still a boy, he thrived. He observed the moon, which helped to lead the invention of micrometers for the telescope. He experimented on terrestrial magnetism. He became the first person ever to successfully inject substance into the bloodstream of an anim as a dog. On that occasion, he did experiments like everyone else in that period that eventually helped to determine longitude. He was an architectural genius, but he was much, much more besides. And so please listen to this podcast and you may end up wondering, as I did, what on earth you're doing with your life. It's quite intimidating. On the podcast, tell me all about it is Steven Brindle. He's been on the podcast for you. He's a wonderful historian whose love and knowledge about architecture, as you'll hear, knows no bounds. This is Christopher Wren. Enjoy.
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Steven Brindle
T minus 10. Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. God save the King. No black white unity till there is first and black unit never to go.
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Dan Snow
To war with one another again.
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Steven Brindle
And lift off and the shuttle has cleared the tower.
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Dan Snow
Steven, great to have you back on the podcast, Dan.
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Steven Brindle
Thank you very much.
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Dan Snow
Christopher Wren, actually we don't associate him with this, but had a deeply traumatic and conflict strewn childhood. Tell me a little bit about that and then perhaps we can talk about how you think it shaped him.
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Steven Brindle
He was a child of the turbulent 17th century, Dan. He came from a very conservative church, high Anglican Royalist background. His father was a clergyman, Dot Christopher Wren. At the time he was the Rector of East Noel in Wiltshire, which is about as raw as you could get. But he was a supporter of Archbishop Lauderdale, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the man who was trying to make the Church of England a more sacramental establishment for Charles I. And he became Dean of Windsor, his father did. So Christopher moved to Windsor, to the Deanery, actually was growing up in, in the Castle when the Civil War broke out. His uncle Matthew Wren was a more senior church when he was the Bishop of Ely. So Wren grew up in this atmosphere of high Anglican churchmanship. But just as England was becoming more polarized and sliding into civil war, and he was 10 when the Civil War broke out and parliamentarian forces occupied Windsor Castle and they sacked the Deanery and they ejected the Dean Christopher's family and all the canons and they had to leave with only their suitcases, so to speak, and they led to Bletchingdon and later back to East Noel. So that must have been pretty traumatic.
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Dan Snow
So that's fascinating. So his family are close allies. Well, they couldn't have been closer in some ways to that high Anglican tradition. They were really Persona non grata with the Low Church parliamentarian forces.
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Steven Brindle
They really were. So much so that Uncle Matthew was imprisoned in the tower of London 17 years.
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Dan Snow
Wow.
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Steven Brindle
Of course, his friend William Lord, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was actually executed.
- [07:56]
Dan Snow
Yes.
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Steven Brindle
So I think Uncle Matthew in a way had a lucky escape, as did Father Dean Christopher.
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Dan Snow
And so you've got young Christopher, he's a refugee, he's lost his home. Do we know how that affected him? Did it interrupt his education?
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Steven Brindle
One thing it didn't interrupt is his education because he was a child prodigy. He was schooled at home by his father and by tutors and he's thought to have gone briefly to attend Westminster School under a famous headmaster called Dr. Richard Busby. I mean, this is during the Commonwealth period. And when he was 16 years old he went up to Oxford. So that would have been in 1658. So Oliver Cromwell is still just about in charge then. And he went to Wadham to study the classics, but also mathematics and astronomy and anatomy. He was a young prodigy. And at Oxford he met other natural philosophers or scientists who later became nucleus of the world society. And as a teenager, for an example, he'd have been attending anatomical dissections. He was assisting a famous surgeon called Dr. Charles Scarborough. He made drawings of the human brain, he made a model of the human eye. He translated a tract on the use of sundials from Latin. He made a model showing the relationship between the earth move and sun. And he made a sort of beehive with glass sides. So those are the sort of things that young Wren was doing as a teenager. So he's not an ordinary teenager.
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Dan Snow
What's happening in this period? It's so exciting. Wren is part of a revolution sweeping across much of Europe. The development of the modern scientific method, things like that. Why? What's happening here?
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Steven Brindle
Well, Dan, the Church's monopoly on learning, on education, had been broken by a number of seismic events, by the Renaissance in Italy, by the study of classical antiquity, by the Reformation, which had removed Britain from the authority of the Catholic Church, and then by the division of religious culture and the Commonwealth, which had completely dethroned bishops. So there was no more idea that the Church was in control of education. Not, ironically, for someone like Wren, who was from such a high Church background. And so the idea that the natural world could and should be studied for itself and that the understanding of it wasn't determined by religious texts was fairly well established by the mid 17th century. And characters like Nicholas Copernicus, the famous Polish astronomer, and Galileo in Italy. Now, they'd had a much harder time because they still lived under the authority of the Catholic Church. And in England, there wasn't the hand of the Church hanging over you in the same kind of way, which is slightly ironic when you think that REM was himself from a high income background. And I don't think we have any sort of answer to that apparent paradox, but certainly REM responded instinctively to the sort of mathematical and scientific culture which was developing. And certainly the 17th century was the age when science and mathematics overthrew defeated superstition and what you might call relics of paganism. James I, for example, who believed implicitly in witchcraft, his grandson, Charles II founded the Royal Society. So that's a measure of the generational change.
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Dan Snow
It sounds to me like Wren's on course to be a astronomer, like sort of his contemporary Newton. What changes, what happened?
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Steven Brindle
That is exactly what he was on course to be. Christopher took an MA degree at Oxford in 1653 and he went straight away to a fellowship at All Sales College, given his obvious intellectual power. Aged 19 and he was already leaning towards astronomy as his main study, particular study of the planet Saturn, apparently. But he was also interested in physics and meteorology, and he had a continued interest in anatomy, dissecting animals and sometimes, I think, even people, or being present at dissections. At any rate, in 1657 he was appointed the professor of Astronomy at Gresham College in London, this remarkable institution which still exists and still holds public lectures. And then 1661, he was appointed the civilian professor of Astronomy at Oxford. Now, Gresham College held weekly lectures, sometimes with scientific demonstrations, and the Royal Society grew out of the group of friends who met after Wren's lectures on astronomy at Gresham College. So he's right at the heart of Bitten's very small scientific establishment, which was a group of friends, people right around him like John Flamsteed, the first astronomer of oil, and Robert Hooke, the man who really invented the microscope.
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Dan Snow
How interesting. I didn't know Rennes was the dynamo of that group.
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Steven Brindle
Well, certainly one of them, yes. Right at the heart of it.
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Dan Snow
How on earth does he end up becoming an architect?
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Steven Brindle
Well, there wasn't really an architectural profession then. It was a matter of being interested in architecture as something which an educated gentleman might well be interested in. Most building was undertaken and managed by craftspeople, by carpenters and masons and bricklayers and surveyors who provide the designs as well. But increasingly the designs designs were influenced by books about classical architecture which had been produced in Italy. Now, in Italy, of course, an architectural profession had emerged in the late 15th and 16th centuries as a result of rise of Renaissance culture. And architects like Bramante and Palladio and Michelangelo indeed had emerged and it had become a profession, but not in England. In England, Wren was one of the first people who we could say became a professional architect. And there were only a couple of precedents for that in English history. Inigo Jones, for example, who's really an artist, who'd come to Charles I's court as a designer of masks and that kind of thing, became the King's surveyor. And so he designed classical buildings alongside maintaining the palaces and decorating them and doing designs for court masks and things. And his nephew John Webb, who was his assistant, was given a sort of architectural education by Jones. But their careers had been cut short by the Civil War, so that was really the only precedent there was in Eng history for an architectural profession. Otherwise There were the craftspeople.
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Dan Snow
Oh, I see. So Ren. I use this expression incorrectly, but as a sort of Renaissance man, as a brilliant all rounder, he might make models of planets. He might also turn his hand to designing buildings as well.
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Steven Brindle
Yes. He's the sort of person who's versed in mathematics and had books and knew about ideas. So if you wanted a building design here, you might turn to him, which is what Uncle Matthew did. Uncle Matthew Wren was released from prison in 1660.
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Dan Snow
So the Restoration. So King Charles II comes to the throne, Cromwell's dead, his son's useless and King Charles II comes back. So good old Matthew Wren's out of prison.
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Steven Brindle
Yes. In 1660, Charles II restored to the throne, Uncle Matthew Wren was released from prison. He was reinstated as Bishop of Ely. His old college, Pembroke College, Cambridge, was in need of a new chapel and Matthew asked his nephew Christopher to design it for him in the way that educated people might design buildings. There were a number of gentlemen architects who'd travelled on the continent during the Commonwealth years and Wren is being seen in that kind of light. And so he produced a very beautiful, very accomplished design for a chapel which still stands in elegant single cell buildings. And it went so well that it was followed up quite quickly with more buildings. Blazzard signed for a chapel screen at All Sales College, Oxford in 1664, and for a new theatre, that is a theatre for ceremonies and lectures, called the Sheldonian Theatre, after Gilbert Sheldon, Bishop of London for Oxford University. And that was also started in 1664.
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Dan Snow
Is there something radically exciting different about these buildings or are they just a job well done?
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Steven Brindle
They were essentially a job well done. The Sheldonian Theatre is certainly remarkable in at least one respect, in that it's about 90ft across. So Wren had deliberately designed a D shaped interior, which at its widest point is, I think, getting on for 90ft. And so he had to design a roof truss which was capable of spanning this without being supported from below. So he had, in a way, set himself this problem which he then had to solve, and he designed a roof truss which has stood ever since. So the Sheldonian is remarkable more as a piece of structural engineering than this piece of architecture as a piece of classical design. It's what you might call them, clunky, the piece of structural engineering. It's superb.
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Dan Snow
Is he taking his lead from Europe?
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Steven Brindle
Wren was really operating within a building world and a building culture in England that was already changing a lot through lots of factors to do with climate change and England's timber, famine and Changes in society and developments in building technology. And so he operated within a building environment which at the start of the 17th century, people were still building timber framed houses. By the end of the century they were building brick houses where the chimneys rule on internal walls, not on external walls, and where they all have arc like shaped windows and their sash windows and the houses and the buildings are all a completely different shape. And all of these changes, what you might call the 17th century building revolution, that was the world Wren operated in. And it was now becoming a given that buildings were going to have upright shaped windows, that they were going to be heated by coal, that they were going mostly to be brick, that timber framing in the old way was dying out, although carpenters were still very important in the building process. And so he's very much working within a building culture which is managed by craftsmen and which is undergoing fundamental changes. And these changes made it easier to conceive buildings in line with the classical rules of design. And those did come from Europe. Yes, from Italy and France. And Rennes would have read architectural books like Palladio's Four Books of Architecture. And he had one long visit to France in 1665 for about nine months. And that was certainly a crucial, informative experience for him. It's the only time he's ever known to have have left England. And he went to Paris and he'd have seen domed churches like the Church of the Sorbonne and the Church of the Val de Grasse. And he saw the Louvre, the great city centre palace, being rebuilt on a huge scale. And he met Gian Lorenzo Bernini, the great Baroque architect who had come to supply Louis XIV with designs for the Louvre. And all of this was a tremendous formative experience for them. He'd have seen building projects going on up on a scale which he would never have seen in England.
- [19:00]
Dan Snow
What a wonderful time. The Baroque building style, the mix of classical architecture, but with the advances of this modern technology that you've referred to, creating these unbelievable wedding cake like buildings. 1665 is an important date, I suppose, because he gets back the following year and inconveniently, London burns down the Great Fire of London.
- [19:20]
Steven Brindle
So this is, as they say, an ill wind that blows nobody any good. And it has to be admitted that the Great Fire was Sir Christopher's big professional break. And after this, in September 1666, four or five days, the whole city burnt down. London population of half a million, chief economic driver of the whole south of England. Huge losses in revenues for the Crown. And so it was an enormous crisis for the Crown and for the government.
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Dan Snow
And a spiritual crisis because there's nowhere to worship. Presumably in a world where they thought that communion was extremely important.
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Steven Brindle
Well, indeed, indeed. St. Paul's Cathedral gone, and 80 parish churches within the City of London destroyed, and the whole city in ashes. And the government and the Corporation of London reacted really with remarkable speed. And within about a week of the fire commissioners had been appointed to advise on rebuilding the city. The Corporation of London appointed two of their best builder craftsmen, Edward Jernman and Peter Mills, and a scientist who was one of Wren's close friends, Robert Hooke and Charles ii, appointed the three leading gentlemen architects, Roger Pratt, Humay and Wren. And they advised on and they set the parameters for the rebuilding of the city, which then went ahead at breakneck speed. Now, Wren was appointed Surveyor of Works to the king in 1669, and in July of the same year, he was appointed Surveyor of the fabric of St Paul's and Charles II's favour was crucial in both respects. So Charles II must have become aware of Rennes as one of the leading natural scientists, natural philosophers and leading life in the Royal Society, and also someone who had successfully designed two of the finest new building in England, but only two. Wren only had about two finished buildings to his credit at this time, and he's entrusted with these awesome responsibilities. And after 1669, no one else was consulted in relation to the rebuilding of.
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Dan Snow
St. Paul's before we come onto St. Paul's which is obviously his most famous building, he did come up with plans for Charles II for a sort of radical redesign. Glow up for the whole of London.
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Steven Brindle
Yes, he did. Several people did. It seemed obvious that there was an opportunity to replan London, because the pre fire city, which was essentially the medieval city, had had really no large public spaces at all. It had moderately wide streets, narrow streets and very narrow streets and streets that you couldn't even drive a cart down, which really alleys. And it was an absolute labyrinth. And that's partly why the whole thing had burnt, because there were no natural fire breaks anywhere in the city. There was nowhere they could readily stop it. And they thought, what a warren. When English people, the few English people who'd been to Rome, for example, and seen the great new roads laid out under Pope Sixtus V, Paris still looked largely the same. Actually, Amsterdam would have looked very much more modern, as Amsterdam was still in the process of the great expansion of the outer canals which we see today. But there seemed to be an opportunity to replan it. And John Evelyn and Robert Hook And Wren all produced plans, which Wrens is the most interesting and the most sophisticated, with a riverside quay and with great wide avenues. Avenues which are focused on two great focal points, on the rebuilt Royal Exchange and on a rebuilt cathedral. But this never happened. And in reality, it was never going to happen, because the chaos that that would have caused in terms of expropriating property, redrawing property boundaries, compensating people, and reallocating property would have delayed the start of rebuilding by a year, two, three years. People from London were camping out in the fields. London needed to rebuild and return to business. And the thought of them negotiating this minefield, I mean, it was clear it was going to be bad enough as it was. So actually, the commission and the King and the corporation accepted that these plans were really utopian and that something much more pragmatic would have to be done. It seems that they'd accept this quite quickly, within a month or two. And it would seem that Wren himself, who was always a supremely pragmatic man, and he was a scientist, realized that actually it was unachievable to any with the English law. If you lived in an absolute monarchy, if you didn't care about where people lived, you could do it. But England was a parliamentary monarchy, and the Corporation of London had to represent its ratepayers and voters. So it was really never going to happen. But they did achieve a lot, actually. And what was rebuilt was really nothing like old London. Lots and lots of little alleys were closed, streets were widened, plots were rationalized. So it was a very much rationalized version of the old city which went on up. But I think Wren himself realized that his plan, beautiful plan, which would have made London one of the most beautiful cities in Europe, was actually unachievable in the circumstances of England in the 1660s.
- [24:36]
Dan Snow
You listen to Dan Snow's history. We're talking about Christopher Wren. More coming up. Lots more. Hey, folks. This episode of Dan Snows History is sponsored by policygenius. Now, here's a stat. This is a sobering statistic. Nearly half American adults say they would suffer financial hardship within six months if they lost their primary income earner. Now, if that's a stat that hits home for you, you're not alone and you're not out of options. With Policygenius, you can find life insurance policies starting at just $276 a year for $1 million in coverage. It's an easy way to protect the people you love and feel good about the future. Policygenius helps you compare your options by getting quotes from America's top insurers in just a few clicks to find your lowest price. Life insurance is a form of financial planning, folks. It's important for us all to get right. Policygenius has thousands of five star reviews on Google and trustpilot to give you the peace of mind you need. So secure your family's future with Policygenius. Head to Policygenius.com to compare free life insurance quotes from top companies and see how much you could save. That's policygenius.com hi folks. I want to tell you about my latest series on Dan Snow's history. Now I expect, like me, you have grown up reading or watching movies about pirates, swashbuckling rogues having adventures on the high seas, disregarding authority, not taking it from the man, not taking any nonsense. What would you say if I told you that basically everything you think about pirates isn't true? Treasure maps, parrots, buried treasure. So what is true? Well, my latest series that is running all through this July with new episodes every Monday, answers that question. We'll be telling the real stories, the pirates, you know, Blackbeard, Captain Kidd and Anne Bonnie. And I'll also be telling you astonishing tales of the pirates that you don't know, like Zheng Yi Sao, the Queen of the South China Seas. Definitely the most formidable pirate in history. So make sure you check out and follow Dan Snows history hit to get new episodes on Pirates every Monday this month. He still had plenty to get his teeth into. He built churches across London, but most famously St. Paul's let's come on to the cathedral. No one had actually built a church, a cathedral on that scale for hundreds of years in England.
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Steven Brindle
That's quite true. A cathedral sized church in Britain. Well, the last one I suppose you could say was Bath Abbey, although as cathedrals go, that's actually quite small. And the last really big one which had been built from scratch would have been Salisbury Cathedral and that was done in 1220. So what should a classical cathedral look like too? Well, there were models, there were a few. There was most obviously St. Peter's in Rome, which would have been regarded by some as a little suspect as the seat of the Pope. But there were very few other cathedral sized classical churches. There were some in Spain, which was the great national enemy, of course, but really, Wren had to devise his own solution and he came up with a series of designs and the first few were rejected. The Greek Cross 1, a Greek Cross is a cross that has all arms of equal length. Then after this, he produced what was called the great model design because an enormous model was built which still exists and is still in St. Paul's Cathedral. And the model was made. A model so large a man might walk within was built at the King's request by a carpenter called William Clear. And this when he was the Greek cross design, sort of a centralized plan with a huge dome and with an extension at the west with a smaller dome and a big portico. And it's a marvellous design, highly original, very coherent too. But it was rejected by the clergy because it didn't have a long processional nave. They said it was unsuitable for Anglican liturgy and it couldn't be finished in stages. So with this rejected, and that was in 1670, Wren went back to the drawing board and he produced something called the Warrant design. And this is really one of the most mysterious episodes in English architectural history. It's called the warrant design because the royal warrant was attached to it, the King's permission to build it and the clergy accepted it. And it's a Latin cross that is said, has a long nave and shorter transepts and eastending. So it looked in clan, more like a traditional English cathedral. In fact, it looked a lot like old St. Paul's as it had been recased, the nave had been recased by Inigo Jones for Charles I and Archbishop lord in the 1630s. And what Wren did really was to replicate the very simplified architectural language and the big Western portico that Jones had applied for medieval cathedral's nave and wrapped that around the rest of his design. So this is a sort of lowest common denominator design, which gives them the appearance that Jones had grafted onto the nave and the shape of the Latin cross. And he crucially had the King's authority to vary the design in ornamental details as he saw fit. And that was the key. Get out.
- [30:04]
Dan Snow
It's so interesting that these designs are being selected and argued about and rejected, not just for money and aesthetics, but also because of the nature of Anglican worship. You know, things are either too Catholic or not or native. So it's three dimensional chess here. There's a lot of stakeholders.
- [30:22]
Steven Brindle
Yes, there are. The great model certainly represents what Rennes would have liked to have built. And it seems surprising if Rennes, with his family background and his evident skill in managing relationships, had not foreseen the objections. And probably he had. But clearly Rennes thought that he could manage this politically with the King's support. But the opposition from the clergy was too strong and in the event he couldn't. And I Suspect that it was opposition motivated partly by a feeling that it looked too Catholic, it looked too much like St. Peter's and they wanted something which looked more English.
- [31:03]
Dan Snow
Give me two or three reasons why St. Paul's Cathedral is one of the great wonders of early modern architecture and engineering.
- [31:09]
Steven Brindle
Oh, gosh, Dan. Well, because it ticked all the boxes. And as a work of engineering, it's just extraordinary. The dome, which is 360ft high to the top, is a masterpiece of structural engineering. No one had ever built anything like this anywhere, except for Brunelleschi in Florence and Michelangelo in Rome. Now, Wren would have seen engravings of how they'd built their domes, but he'd never actually seen either of them. He had to devise his solution and be sure that it would work with his good friend Robert hall, purely on paper and out of his own head. He couldn't, like, have a test run at it, although he probably did, to make models. The Domus and Paul's is an extraordinary achievement. To make it work visually, he had to have the stone thing on top. That's called lantern. But lantern weighs over 300 tons of masonry, so how is he going to support that? And it had to look right in proportion to the body of the building. And he couldn't look too high from inside because that would make it look like looking up a telescope. So Wren's solution, devised with his good friend Robert Hooke, was to build a sort of a cone shaped structure. If you think about a cone upturning a cone on a table and you put a weight on top of it, and a cone is a naturally very strong form. It's a much stronger form than a half globe shape. A half globe shape. If you sit something on top of it, the weight will all be going on the flat of the top of it. A cone translates all the load directly down, down. And so Wren built a brick cone, which you can't see from the outside, which takes the weight of the lantern and translates it, transfers it right down to the base of the drum, actually. And the drum conceals the lower part of the cone. And from the inside there's an inner dome, which is what you see from the inside, which looks correct in proportion. And on the outside there is an outer dome of lead and timber. So the thing appears in proportion from inside and outside. And it stood from for what, 350 years and it survived the Blitz and it's visible for miles and miles away. And it's a landmark which works both from close quarters and from the far distance. And it has been acknowledged ever since. It's a masterpiece of structural engineering as well as of architectural design.
- [33:29]
Dan Snow
And until the mid 20th century, it was the tallest building in London, extraordinarily.
- [33:34]
Steven Brindle
Yes. And bear in mind that Wren, when he was appointed as surveyor for St. Paul's he had only three finished buildings to his credit. There was no architectural education. And Wren was. When he took on this and the city churches and the Royal Surveyorship, he was having to educate himself in building management, sourcing building materials, architectural design and structural engineering and project management, all on the largest possible scale as he went along. Even though there's quite a lot of documentary evidence, it is difficult to grasp the scale of Sir Christopher's achievement. He was having to educate himself. This as he was going along.
- [34:15]
Dan Snow
Unimaginable. St. Paul's is rumbling on. So from the 1670s, it would eventually.
- [34:20]
Steven Brindle
Be completed in about 1712, I think.
- [34:24]
Dan Snow
So apart from anything else, more revolutions, more upheavals, more foreign invasions that he would experience. And yet the building went into up. And as well as doing all that, as you say, he's Surveyor of the King's Works. That means work on palaces, places like Hampton Court and Kensington, but he's also building all these famous Wren churches around the city. What's going on here? Is he doing this work? Is it his staff? Is it like one of these Renaissance artists who has a studio where underlings are pumping out all these designs? Are we able to see his fingerprints?
- [34:53]
Steven Brindle
We can see his fingerprints, but it's a very messy, pragmatic English situation. And although they're often called the Wren city churches, he certainly didn't have complete creative responsibility for all of them. He really wouldn't have had time. There were commissioners responsible for supervising them. There was him and Robert Hook, really, on behalf of the Corporation of London, the Diocese of London. In the Middle Ages, the City of London, rather unimaginably had about 100 tiny parishes. And some of these were merged and closed, and before the Great Fire, it was down to about 80. And off the Great Fire, they were reduced further to. And the parishes, of course, even as merged, were autonomous organizations. And some of them had money and some of them had rich donors. So some of them got going under their own steam. And there are other cases where Wren probably do a general plan and let the mason or the bricklayer responsible get on with it.
- [35:52]
Dan Snow
More on Christopher Wren coming up.
- [36:04]
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- [36:34]
Dan Snow
Hi folks. I want to tell you about my latest series on Dan Snow's history. Now I expect like me, you have grown up reading or watching movies about pirates, swashbuckling rogues having adventures on the high seas, disregarding authority, not taking it from the man, not taking any nonsense. What would you say if I told you that basically everything you think about pirates isn't true? Treasure maps, parrots, buried treasure. So what is true? Well, my latest series that is running all through this July with new episodes every Monday answers that question will be time telling the real stories of the pirates, you know, Blackbeard, Captain Kidd and Anne Bonny. And I'll also be telling you astonishing tales of the pirates that you don't know, like Zheng Yi Sao, the queen of the South China Seas. Definitely the most formidable pirate in history. So make sure you check out and follow Dan Snow's history hit to get new episodes on pirates every Monday. This let's come back to his job as a sort of royal surveyor because he modernizes Whitehall palace, which people will know Banqueting House is the only bit that's left today. It was much it was destroyed in a great fire of 1698 which also destroyed many vital historic archives and documents. Well, a great tragedy in 1698 fire. We'll do another podcast on that sometimes. So Whitehall Royal Hospital, Chelsea people will be familiar with Hampton Court. I mean just as the English monarchy, the British monarchy is being transformed. He is rendering that transformation in bricks and mortar, isn't he?
- [38:16]
Steven Brindle
Yes, he is. Wren recreates a new image for the monarchy, for the restored monarchy. But the monarchy itself changed very considerably over his time in office. He was appointed to surveyor by Charles II in 1669. And royal success was really crucial to Rennes success. And Charles II commissioned quite a lot of alterations at Whitehall palace which all went in the farm of 1698. And Charles II commissioned a palace at Winchester near the end of his life, which was gone, which was behind the Winchester Great hall where the Peninsula Barracks are now. And that's gone too. The Royal Hospital at Chelsea, a major new building still in its original use, with plain brick facades and white porticoes, is very sober, very English, very dignified and that sort of classic. Wren and Charles II's brother, James II, who succeeded in 1685, he commissioned Wren to design chapels at Whitehall palace and Somerset House for his Catholic queen, Mary Modena. But of course he's then ejected from the throne in 1688. Nine in the Glorious Revolution. And Wren survives this great political sea change. I mean, Wren's an old Tory, a loyal servant of the Stuart dynasty and you really might have expected him to lose his job in 1689. It says a lot for William and Mary's judgment and also for Wren's pragmatic flexibility that he didn't resign and they didn't sack it. They knew a really good servant when they saw one.
- [39:50]
Dan Snow
As well as the Royal Hospital in Chelsea, there's Greenwich, which is, well, equally, if not more spectacular.
- [39:55]
Steven Brindle
Yes, much more spectacular. Wren began three great schemes for William and Mary. Well, two great and one maiden. Very soon after they came to the throne in 1689. William III was asthmatic and he hated Whitehall palace, which he said was too damp. So they needed a residence near the centre of power and they bought an existing suburban house called Nottingham House, which was renamed Kensington, that became Kensington palace. And Wren did a very swift extension conversion job and created Kensington palace for them. Those sober brick facades, those are mostly, though not entirely bicycle him. Hampton Court was the grand out of town residence and that was always going to on a much bigger scale. And there were initial designs for really spectacular Versailles style transformation. But Britain was at war now with France and so the money just wasn't available. And so what Wren had to carry out instead was a more restricted rebuilding of the Royal apartments at Hampton Court. And that's now one of the great set pieces of English Baroque architecture. But it's Wren responding to tight budgets, actually, and it's a superb piece of adaptation. And then Greenwich, that was William and Mary's riposte to the Royal Hospital at Chelsea, this time as an almshouse for disabled and wounded sailors. And it was conjured out of an incomplete Royal palace. Charles II had been building a new palace there. One wing had been built, there was the one wing of Charles II's palace and there was the Queen's house, which had been built by inigo Jones between 1617 and 1635. And out of those two things, Wren conjured that magnificent vista between two buildings. He had two buildings to start with and he made that marvellous composition out of them. And so it's his most Baroque composition, but it's also a pragmatic response to quite a tricky brief. And it's another example of Wren's compositional brilliance. But the thing he never got to build was a really large and really spectacular palace. After the Whitehall palace fire, he did produce designs for something of sort of Louvre like, or Versailles like, Splendour on the side of Whitehall, which were never built. And actually there were much more ambitious designs for Greenwich and for Hampton Court and for Whitehall. And although those were never built, great drawings were produced and they really underlay the careers, the architectural achievements of Nicholas Hawksmoor and John Vanborough. So those unbuilt designs were an important stage in English berk architecture.
- [42:39]
Dan Snow
And then Stephen, one of my favourite spaces in the world, the painted hall in that Greenwich Hospital, which, if people don't know, they must Google immediately with the. The most spectacular ceiling painting in Britain. That's one of his, isn't it?
- [42:53]
Steven Brindle
Yes, it is. Wren designed a painted hall as the dining hall or refectory for the new Royal Hospital Greenwich. And in the building over the way, that was the chapel. And Wren would certainly have been involved in appointing Sir James Thornhill, England's one great sort of native mural painter in that kind of Baroque tradition, to decorate the interior. And the ceiling of the main space represents William Mary, but because it took so long to do, the mural at the far end represents the new Hanoverian dynasty, because it wasn't finished until well after 1714. But Wren would have been involved in setting out the outlines of Thornhill's design, would at any rate have approved it, I would think.
- [43:40]
Dan Snow
Yeah, you can see the ebb and flow of politics in that ceiling because you've got William and Mary and then suddenly they go, oh, no, sorry, it's actually all about George I. So it's. You can see the royal sponsors changing. Speaking of 1714, we've got Queen Anne, the last Stuart monarch, dying. Wren's 82, he's been in office since the 1660s.
- [43:59]
Steven Brindle
Yes, in 1669, about 45 years, there were rumblings of discontent which was happening in the. In the 17 teens, then coincided with the change in the dynasty. And Wren was very much associated with the Tory Party and the House of Stuart, and in came the House of Hanover and the new Whig administration eventually sacked him in 1718. And he was replaced with sort of a political appointee, a man called William Benson, who was another architectural amateur, but who was the sort of polar opposite to Wren, being corrupt and Incompetent and lazy. Benson was used to offer work to chaos in about a year and got sacked himself. So Sir Christopher retired to his house at Hampton Court with his drawings.
- [44:44]
Dan Snow
And he made old bones, didn't he? I mean, he died in 1723. So he was.
- [44:49]
Steven Brindle
He was 90.
- [44:50]
Dan Snow
Yeah, he was 90. Extraordinary. And I was brought up to sort of revere Christopher Wren. My dad's obsessed with dragging me around Christopher Wren Church tours. Is that just our parochial Little Englander point of view or is he really our greatest architect and indeed globally significant?
- [45:08]
Steven Brindle
He's certainly our greatest architect. Globally significant. He's significant within the Anglosphere, I'd say not within a European context. Wren took inspiration from Europe. There's only been a very few periods when English architecture has influenced European influence is usually flows in the other direction. But within the Anglosphere, in North America and in Australia and New Zealand, Wren's whole approach to classical design has been enormously influential. And there are whole categories of loosely classical design which owe a great deal to Sir Christopher. His sort of reasonable, pragmatic, moderate Englishness expressed in terms of classical design. So he's had global influence, I'd say, within English speaking countries and I'd say he's popular. Probably our greatest architect. Yes. I mean, there are designers who are as original and as brilliant as Wren and arguably more so Nicholas Hawksmoor, his own assistant, and John Vanbrugh and John Soane and Edwin Lutyens and the few Victorian architects you could say, but, and this is a big but, they're not that much, much more brilliant than Renner's designers. However you try to cut this. And all of them had to some degree the benefit of training and education. And all later ones grew up in an environment where there was vast architectural literature available and where building, construction and management had already been thoroughly committed to paper and Wren had very little of that. Wren had to invent much of what we now think of as architectural method and the use of architectural drawings in controlling construction, for example, for himself. And he had to learn the whole business on the job and hardly anyone else had to do that. Vanborough and Hawksmoor are very much standing on his shoulders. So if we take all that together and look at him as a whole, I'd say, yes, yes, he's our greatest architect.
- [47:09]
Dan Snow
I suppose my last question is, why do we regard all these buildings as canonical? Why are some of them still here? Is that just historical accidents? Is it something to do with the materials, the engineering, the durability of those buildings? I mean, many of the things we've talked about, they are still the spine of people's tourist experience of England.
- [47:27]
Steven Brindle
Yes, they are. I suppose part of the answer is that they were just very well constructed. Wren lived at a time when the building arts were already in a highly developed state in England. He had excellent craftspeople to work with who understood their materials very well indeed, and Read, who was clearly a wonderful manager and leader, lifted the level of architectural craftsmanship all around him by his sort of sympathetic, encouraging leadership and his very high standards. So that's one thing they were very well built in the first place, and another is that in many of these cases, once you built something like St. Paul's Cathedral or Trinity College Library or even Pembroke College Chapel, you're unlikely to want to do it again. I mean, many of them were sort of long term and monumental in form anyway. But after there was a generational reaction against ren in the 40 or 50 years after his death, but thereafter, really, from the late 8th and early 9th century, he was respected and revered as a superb designer. And I think his buildings were already acknowledged as being of very high quality and something special by, for example, John Soane and Charles Robert Cockerill, who were two of the leading early 19th century architects. So Wren already had a special reputation and his buildings would have had that sort of air as being something special that shouldn't be destroyed lightly by the early 19th century. And I think that would be a fact too. But in a way, he was a brilliant man in the right place at the right time. Every now and then, cultures do just throw up a supremely gifted, talented individual who actually then has the opportunities to express their talents. And music, it's. It might be Mozart and Haydn and in the arts it might be Michelangelo and Bernini, and in our case it's Shakespeare in the dramatic culture of the Elizabethan age. And Wren in architecture in the late 17th century. And this way in which the right person sometimes comes along at just the right moment in history, it does lead one to reflect on all the people who were born at the wrong time too. But Sir Christopher, I think, was definitely born at the right moment.
- [49:42]
Dan Snow
Moment, yes, Stephen, I now believe that I too could have reshaped this sceptered aisle if I'd only been born at different time. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I really appreciate that, Stephen, great pleasure as always.
- [49:54]
Steven Brindle
Thank you very much.
- [49:59]
Dan Snow
Thanks very much for listening, everyone. Before you go, I'll tell you that ever at the cutting edge, the bleeding edge of what's new and exciting, after 10 years of the podcast, you can finally watch on YouTube. We are moving fast and breaking things here, folks. Our Friday episodes each week will be available to watch on YouTube. And you can see me. You can see what we're talking about. I'd love it if you could subscribe to that channel over there. Just click the link in the show notes below and you can watch it on your phone, your tablet, or even a tv. Or even a giant cinema movie screen if you have one in your underground layer. See you next time, folks.
- [50:44]
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- [51:16]
Verizon Representative
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- [51:24]
Adam Wild and Jack
Hey, we're the Adam Wild and Jack Show. You can find us wherever you get your podcasts every free Wednesday. And Jax, we talk about what?
- [51:30]
Steven Brindle
Well, we're just two best pals talking about pop culture, dating, and also exposing each other's deepest, darkest secrets.
- [51:37]
Adam Wild and Jack
And if you've ever been ghosted, we have a little segment called Left on Red where we call the person who ghosted you and say, hey, why'd you do that? And usually it leads to some pretty embarrassing and explosive things.
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Steven Brindle
Yeah, yeah.
- [51:46]
Adam Wild and Jack
So check out the Adam Wild and Jack show, available every Wednesday. Wherever you get your podcasts.
- [51:55]
Verizon Representative
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- [52:00]
Steven Brindle
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