St. Stephen’s Defined window arches have become the Church’s principal light sources. since the east windows 220
In many of the City churches Wren was not are coloured and the oval side windows are 855 A Thousand Years particular about right angles in the plans, but shielded by later buildings. The worshipper the geometry of St. Stephen’s is perfectly and the agnostic alike may feel at first only (0)7949 rectangular. What makes this Church so that they are in a pleasant interior, but the of the Church of remarkable, however, is not the delicacy of the flooding light, and the arrangement of the +44 M: plasterwork or the accuracy of the geometry, interior space, so clear yet capable of several · St. Stephen Walbrook hut the subtlety of the space which that readings, have a cumulative effect. That effect geometry defines. Significantly, the space has does not depend on decorative richness – the London never been interrupted by galleries, for there enrichment exists only to give softness and is no place in which galleries could have been substance to the abstraction of lines; the roses, Design, acceptably placed. laurels and palms of the plasterwork are only &
Wren’s churches were intended to be what the most conventional of symbols. Wren ection he called ‘auditories’, in which everyone considered geometry to be the basis of the Dir t present could see, hear and feel themselves whole world and the manifestation of its Ar part of the congregation. A well-lit interior Creator, while light not only made that was imperative, with the minimum of geometry visible but also represented the Meyer obstruction from internal supports. Wren gift of Reason, of which geometry was for him Hauke
also provided, as a matter of course, a place the highest expression. Like the solution to a for the communion table at the east end, mathematical problem, everything fits into by and a principal entrance at the west; the place with apparent simplicity; yet this latter is unusually impressive because the simplicity itself is mysterious and magical. Designed slope of the site makes it necessary for a Whether one experiences St. Stephen’s alone, flight of steps up from the street. From the in stillness and quiet, or in a full congregation porch, we pass into a short nave of only two resounding with music, the effect is always the bays with double aisles, to face a chancel of same. Life outside is complicated and chaotic. one bay on the far side of the dome; the main To enter is not to escape into fantasy; rather is focus of the interior becomes immediately it to submit to the strongest positive assertion clear. But the space can be read in other of the true order of the universe. ways. We seem to be inside a set of pillars arranged on a regular grid plan, except that four have been left out of the centre, under The Moment of Truth the dome. Or again, we may see a perfectly regular domed church, with four triplets of Like all great works of art, St. Stephen’s is of columns, but extended westwards into a sort its time, and our sense of history requires that of ante-chapel from which we can look into we recognise its associations with a great age; the central symmetrical space. The dome but again like all great works of art, it has seems to rest on the points between the arches, something about it that is timeless, and its and on the eight columns under these points; message, indeed its very survival, must be the in fact there are walls and window arches concern of us all. behind these points, which share with the columns the function of support. These Professor Kerry Downes Suggested Donation for this Brochure: £1
Early History By 1428 this church and its graveyard were of ceremonial assembly. The domed churches St. Stephen’s provided a kind of dress too small for the parish, and licences were he had seen in France had excited him – for rehearsal in visual terms. The structural In the second century A.D. a temple of obtained to build a larger church on higher there were none in England at this time – and problems between the two buildings were Mithras stood on the bank of the Walbrook, a ground some twenty metres to the east, the must have engaged his emotions as well as quite different, for the dome and vaults of stream running across London from the City ground having risen about six metres; and appealing to his intellectual appreciation of the Cathedral are all of masonry, whereas Wall near Moorfie1ds to the Thames. In this Walbrook, no longer a stream, was now a the geometry of solids and voids. But at this those of St. Stephen’s are, as in all the temple Roman soldiers sought valour and street. The land, 208 1/2 feet by 66 feet, was stage he had not yet come to imagine the parish churches, lath and plaster facings on virility in shower-baths of hot blood from given by Robert Chicheley, a member of The Cathedral as a building which would differ elaborate carpentry frames. Wren could slaughtered bulls. After the recall of the Worshipful Company of Grocers. The from parish churches, not merely in size therefore design the Church with much legions to Rome in 410 A.D. the building building, of flint and rubble with stone and scale, but also essentially in kind. This smaller supports, giving an unparalleled became a quarry; the locals left only the dressings, had a tower at the west and a realisation came to him in 1672, when he feeling of lightness of weight and brightness foundations. These were discovered when cloister on the north. It was one of a began working on a sequence of designs of illumination. He was able to make the eight Bucklersbury House was built in 1953-1957, hundred churches in the square mile of the that culminated in the ‘Great Model’ still arches equal in span and to introduce light and they are preserved to this day. However City of London. preserved at St. Paul’s. These were designs through all of them, whereas in St. Paul’s the there were no foundations of the Christian The houses were not so solid: most of more radical, more European, and more requirements of supporting the enormously church which stood on the site and was a them were built on timber frames, infilled unified than the ultimate one, in which he tall and heavy landmark of the dome meant going concern in 1090 A.D. when it was given with lath and plaster work, and as the was made to compromise by incorporating that the diagonal arches had to be smaller to the monastery of St. John by Eudo, Dapifer population increased roofs were raised and the nave and transepts of a traditional Latin and windowless. Even so, at St. Paul’s a ring (cupbearer) to Henry I. It was Saxon, not back vards built over. In 1662 the diarist, cross plan. Even so, what we see today inside of eight equal semicircular arches, coming Norman, and must have been built on the Samuel Pepys, added a storey to his house St. Paul’s centres round a large dome carried down to acute points, is marked on the Mithraic foundations to hallow a heathen site. elsewhere in the City, taking light from on eight piers. Both the Great Model and the masonry by moulding; it is both a survival and This could have been as early as 700 A.D., or his neighbour. This crowding allowed the final solution show a quality of mind, of a reminder of the conception Wren had tried as late as 980. rapid spread both of infection and of fire. feeling as well as of intellect, for which out at Walbrook. At the east end of the church was Bearbidder Lane, the source of the Great Plague of 1665. The only doctor who remained with his patients was Nathaniel Hodges, to whom there is a plaque in the present Church.
Then, early on Sunday, 2nd September, 1666, a fire in a bakery near London Bridge became out of control and a strong wind fanned the f1ames westward. Not only the wooden houses and their furnishings, but warehouses with their stocks, and public buildings, and churches of brick and stone, were consumed in the fierce heat – molten lead running in the gutters, while stone was burnt to lime. Within twenty-four hours, St. Stephen Walbrook The Interior of the Church was burnt to the ground. The Altar
of Wren, whose body lies in the vault beneath significant. Architecture is especially an art The Great Fire destroyed over three quarters College Library at Cambridge, and to improve the floor. There are memorials to John in which positive virtues are gained from of the City. The disaster was felt by the and extend Hampton Court. He was to be Dunstable, ‘father of English Music’, and to compromise. whole nation, and King Charles II appointed a responsible, after the Rebuilding Act of 1670, rector George Croly, the famous preacher commission to plan rebuilding, which had to for the Monument to the Fire still to be seen whom the Brontë sisters were taken to hear be done quickly in order to avoid a fresh start on Fish Street Hill. He was also entrusted with by Emily’s publisher’s reader, himself a in a different place. The old street plan was the building of fifty or so new churches, in parishioner. The list of rectors includes retained and timber buildings were naturally which enterprises his colleague, Dr. Robert Henry Pendleton, the ‘Vicar of Bray’; several banned. Many churches were not rebuilt: Hooke, was to be of considerable assistance divines, one of whom was later sent to the St. Bene’t Sherehog, for example, was united to him. Tower of London; and de Courcey Laffan, with St. Stephen Walbrook as it could not who helped Baron Courbetin to revive the simply be abolished. Churches had to be the Olympic Games. appointed places for the legal recording of The King and Wren Because the building was not islanded as it baptisms, marriages and burials. is now, the exterior is roughly finished: ‘Never Wren had come to the notice of Charles II was so rich a jewel in so poor a setting, so by 1661, soon after the Restoration of the sweet a kernel in so rough a husk’, wrote Rebuilding Begins Monarchy. The King tried without success Bumpus. By the eighteenth century, the to induce him to travel to Tangier, as a building was famous all over Europe. When The churches, and especially the Cathedral, distinguished Oxford scientist, in order to Lord Burlington went to Rome to see fine were symbolic of religious and civic authority. supervise work on the fortifications of this buildings, he was met by the Italian sculptor- Because it was bound to be complicated newly acquired outpost. Wren elected to architect, Canova, who congratulated him on to design and costly to rebuild, St. Paul’s remain in England, perhaps anticipating the coming from London to which, he said, he Cathedral did not have priority in the reversion of the Surveyorship of the King’s would gladly return to feast his eyes once reconstruction programme: this austere Works on the death of the holder of that more on St. Paul’s Cathedral, Somerset House, anomaly allowed St. Stephen Walbrook, when office. Charles II was a shrewd judge of men and, most of all, St. Stephen Walbrook. rebuilt, to be unique. and may well have seen better than Wren at Burlington had to admit that he did not The rebuilding commission’s six members, that time where the Doctor’s true avocation know the last, and Canova sent him back to nominated equally by the King and the lay. By 1665 Wren was sufficiently committed look at it, saying ‘we have nothing to touch City, were all concerned with architecture or to architecture to devote to its study much of it in Rome’. Sir John Sommerson has A Church Monument building, but some of them were by profession a long visit to France. described the Church as ‘the pride of English occupied in other fields. On the King’s side Early in 1669 the King’s Surveyor died, and architecture, and one of the few City churches One very common compromise must be Dr. (later Sir) Christopher Wren (1632-1723), Wren was appointed to succeed him. This in which the genius of Wren shines in full between the architect’s general dream of what a geometrician, an astronomer and something made him royal architect, but it was to the splendour’. Sir Nikolaus Pevsner lists it as his art is all about, and the requirements of of an anatomist, was at this time Savilian Great Fire and not to the Monarch that he one of the ten most important buildings each individual commission. In 1672 St. Paul’s Professor of Astronomy at Oxford. Wren had owed the opportunity to rebuild St. Paul’s and in England. had occupied Wren’s mind for nine years, first already to his credit the design of university the City churches. as a matter of restoration and modernisation, buildings, completed or under construction, in London already used up large amounts of and later as one of totally replacing the old both Oxford and Cambridge. He was about to coal from Tyneside. It would have been an Towards St. Paul’s cathedral. The first design he presented four make architecture his life’s work and to ill wind indeed that blew only smoke and years after the Fire, in 1670, was for no more become, over the ensuing forty years or so, the soot, and Parliament put a tax on coal arriving A good site, even an important one, is not, than a large parish church with a nave and most important, powerful and influential in the capital to pay for the rebuilding however, enough to account for the design side galleries, attached to a large domed architect in England. Wren was to design programme. Separate commissions were set of St. Stephen’s, and it is here that the vestibule which had as much to do with his the new St. Paul’s Cathedral, Chelsea up to deal with the rebuilding of the Cathedral commencement date of 1672 becomes enthusiasm for domes as with the needs Hospital and Greenwich Hospital, Trinity and the churches. Wren, because of his position as Surveyor, draughtsman was given five guineas; like The portico to the north, which was never the higher buildings around have robbed the was appointed architect to both, with a special Wren, he had been working simultaneously built, was intended to have colonnades on Church of much of its light, a return to clear office staffed for each project. His personal on designs for the Church as well as for either side, continuing down the sides of glass is now planned. control of the design and building of the St. Paul’s Cathedral. the market place, at the opposite end of which Cathedral was far more strict than that applied The whole London building trade was now was placed on 29th May, 1672, a marble to the churches. The limitations on one man’s working at full capacity, and it was still five equestrian statue of Charles II on a high time and energy meant that a considerable years before the roofing of the Church was pedestal, the gift of Sir Robert Viner. The amount of responsibility had to be delegated. complete. In 1678 the high box pews were sculpture is now resited at Newby Hall near This is confirmed by the range of variation in installed; Wren had allowed for their height in Ripon. Wren may well have had in his mind quality, of exactness, finish and decoration the high bases of the sixteen internal columns. that this open space should resemble the between one church and another. Certainly not The pews and font, like William Newman’s Forum of ancient Rome. all the sixteen churches begun in 1670 were font cover, pulpit, reredos and western screen, On 27th May, 1679, the Vestry planned a entirely his personal work. Yet another four introduced in 1679, were paid for not out of dinner for the architect, masons and joiners, as were started in 1671, and thirteen more the coal tax but by private subscriptions. the Church was ready for use. The steeple was between 1673 and 1677; but in 1672 only not built until 1713-1717; it closely resembles one church was begun, and that was St. the steeples of St. James Garlickhythe and Stephen Walbrook. It is probable that the St. Michael Paternoster Royal. unique character of this Church is connected both with the date of its commencement and with the fact that it was Wren’s own Additions and Modifications parish church (he lived at No. 15 Walbrook). The Mosaic In retrospect we can say that Wren was bound A hundred years later an organ was placed to design a masterpiece in 1672, and it was in the western apse, and Benjamin West’s In 1888 the box pews were removed and a fortunate parish that requested him then huge altarpiece of ‘The Burial of St. Stephen’ the paving stones replaced by mosaic, which to proceed. was placed above the reredos, blocking the unfortunately contradicts Wren’s statement main east window. Benjamin West, born in that this is a neo-Classical, not a Gothic, Springfield, Pennsylvania, was the first (and church. This provided for choir stalls and A Masterpiece is Begun so far the only) American painter to pews arranged to make a ‘nave, transepts and become President of the Royal Academy. He chancel’. Neither the liturgical ideas of The first stones of the new Church were is buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral. In 1850 Wren’s time, which called for a pulpit laid on 17th December, 1672, by the Lord the painting was moved to a position on more impressive than the altar, nor the artistic Mayor of London, the Lieutenant of the Tower the north wall, where the doorway intended ideas of the nineteenth century, allowed of London, one of the Chicheley family, by Wren, with portico, was blocked up glorious use of the space under the dome for a six members of the Court of the Grocers’ because of the stench of the Stocks Market, central altar. Company (patrons of the Church), the the principal market at that time (now the site Rector, two churchwardens and four other of the Lord Mayor’s City residence, the parishioners. Two months later the Vestry gave Mansion House). At that time the windows Fame and The Famous Wren ‘or his lady’ a silk purse with twenty were all filled with Victorian stained glass, guineas for ‘his great care and extraordinary which was later destroyed in the Second There are many burials under the Church pains taken in contriving the design of the World War and replaced afterwards with clear and interesting memorials on the walls, Church’ – the usual formula for the person glass. In 1963, War damage compensation unfortunately not including one to Sir John who designed a building, indicating that the paid for east windows of stained glass Vanbrugh, dramatist, architect of Blenheim design had been finalised. Wren’s chief The Font designed by the artist, Keith New, but because and of Castle Howard, and junior colleague