The Colours of St Paul’s St Paul’s Cathedral, London, is a Church of England cathedral, the seat of the Bishop of London and mother church of the Diocese of London. It sits at the top of Ludgate Hill, the highest point in the City of London. Its dedication to Paul the Apostle dates back to the original church on this site, founded in AD 604. The cathedral is one of the most famous and most recognisable sights of London, with its dome, framed by the spires of Wren’s City churches, dominating the skyline for 300 years.[3] At 365 feet (111 m) high, it was the tallest building in London from 1710 to 1962, and its dome is also among the highest in the world.
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St Paul’s Cathedral is an exceptionally well-documented historic building and the architectural archive charts the history of the design, construction, decoration and maintenance of the present cathedral designed by Sir Christopher Wren. The original drawings by Wren and his draughtsmen as well as the building accounts, contracts and records of the Rebuilding Commission are held in the cathedral’s deposited collections at London Metropolitan Archives. The Wren office drawings have recently been reappraised and catalogued by architectural historian Dr Gordon Higgott and all 226 drawings are published on the Cathedral’s online collections database. The Surveyors’ Papers held in the on-site architectural archive at St Paul’s date primarily from the surveyorship of Francis Cranmer Penrose (Surveyor, 1852–1897) to the present day and record the structural changes and decorative embellishments to the Cathedra during this period. These include the decoration of the interior and the addition of mosaics and stained glass windows during the second half of the nineteenthcentury, the extension and rearrangement of the choir, the structural reinforcement of the dome and dome piers during the 1920s, the post-war reconstruction and redesign of the bombdamaged east end, north transept and Chapter House, and more recent works including the interior cleaning project. The archive also includes designs by some very famous names, such as the eighteenthcentury English history painter, Sir James Thornhill, the nineteenthcentury architectural partnership of Bodley and Garner, Nazarene illustrator Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, architect and Surveyor to Westminster Abbey Stephen Dykes Bower, twentieth-century sculptors William Reid Dick and John Skelton, and stained glass designer Brian Thomas. The records demonstrate the working relationships between St Paul’s and the artists commissioned
to embellish the historic interior and are complemented by the Cathedral’s larger hanging collections and models, which include designs by Alfred Stevens, William Burges, FC Penrose, William Blake Richmond and Mervyn Macartney. St Paul’s Cathedral is an exceptionally well-documented historic building and the architectural archive charts the history of the design, construction, decoration and maintenance of the present cathedral designed by Sir Christopher Wren. The original drawings by Wren and his draughtsmen as well as the building accounts, contracts and records of the Rebuild-
ing Commission are held in the cathedral’s deposited collections at London Metropolitan Archives. The Wren office drawings have recently been reappraised and catalogued by architectural historian Dr Gordon Higgott and all 226 drawings are published on the Cathedral’s online collections database. The Surveyors’ Papers held in the on-site architectural archive at St Paul’s date primarily from the surveyorship of Francis Cranmer Penrose (Surveyor, 1852–1897) to the present day and record the structural changes and decorative
embellishments to the Cathedra during this period. These include the decoration of the interior and the addition of mosaics and stained glass windows during the second half of the nineteenthcentury, the extension and rearrangement of the choir, the structural reinforcement of the dome and dome piers during the 1920s, the post-war reconstruction and redesign of the bombdamaged east end, north transept and Chapter House, and more recent works including the interior cleaning project. The archive also includes designs by some very famous names, such as the eighteenth-century English history painter, Sir James Thornhill, the nineteenth-century architectural partnership of Bodley and Garner, Nazarene illustrator Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, architect and Surveyor to Westminster Abbey Stephen Dykes Bower, twentieth-century sculptors William Reid Dick and John Skelton, and stained glass designer Brian Thomas. The records demon strate working relationships between St Paul’s and the artists commis sioned to embellish the historic interior and are complemented by the Cathedral’s larger hanging collections and models, which include designs by Alfred Stevens, William Burges, FC Penrose, William Blake Richmond and Mervyn Macartney. St Paul’s Cathedral is an exceptionally well-documented historic building and the architectural archive charts the history of the design, construction, decoration and maintenance of the present cathedral designed by Sir Christopher Wren. The original drawings by Wren and his draughtsmen as well as the building accounts, contracts and records of the Rebuilding Commission are held in the cathedral’s deposited collections at London Metropolitan Archives. The Wren office drawings have recently been reappraised and catalogued by architectural historian Dr Gordon Higgott and all 226 drawings are published on the online collections.
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don’s Cathedral and embodies the spiritual life and heritage of the British people. Cathedrals serve a wide community. A Cathedral houses the seat - or in Latin, cathedral of the bishop, making it a centre for Christian