How Sustainable is the Old by Daniel Preston

How Sustainable is the Old? An Exploration of the Sustainability of the Great London Reconstruction, 1666

Daniel Alexander Preston

After flames rippled across medieval London in 1666, leveling the urban capital, the city was forced to re-erect as a glorified modern center. With the architectural landmarks that once dotted the London skyline, including St. Paul’s Cathedral, now in ashes, their resurrection was of the utmost importance. Reflecting the modernity of the English people, the new cathedral was built to suit. Through various iterations, the massive cathedral emerged in an unconventionally baroque form and in an even more unconventionally sustainable fabric. Although the ecological and cultural footprint of St. Paul’s Cathedral is not infallible, it most certainly requires recognition. Its construction stabilized the economy of a city that lost over seventy percent of it population and it’s manor of construction and materials used proved to be ecologically friendly. However, this foreign design, new to London, ignited controversy

throughout the city and England as a whole making one question the buildings cultural and social sustainability. Nevertheless, the complexities of the Cathedrals construction and presence in the skyline, point to the sustainability of St. Paul’s in an economical and environmental sense but seem to stray from that when regarded in a cultural sense.

In the early hours of Sunday, September 2nd, 1666, a fire started in Farynor Bakery, a few yards from the head of London Bridge. Rapidly spreading west, the destructive blaze threatened the medieval City of London. Within hours, the city glowed “like a palace of gold, or a great building of burnished brass.”1 With winding cobbled alleyways, overcrowded and narrow, the fire easily maneuvered throughout the city. The densely populated, illegally thatched roofs, which provided a cheap and effective finishing, quickly succumbed to the wrath of the bakery fire. Refugees fled the burning metropolis and retreated to nearby fields which were quickly “turned into seas of rags and canvas, as tens of thousands set up camp in makeshift shelters” while “the Thames was covered with barges and lighters filled with household goods as people took to the river in an effort to escape.”2 By Monday evening, pandemonium had developed throughout the city as the light of the aggressive flames illuminated the towering fabric of London’s most prominent landmark, St. Paul’s Cathedral. For two days and nights the cathedral was wrapped in flames. The streets were flooded with over six acres of the molten lead that dripped from the choir roof. The immense heat split Inigo Jones’s3 western façade and projected 1 Thomas Vincent, God’s Terrible Voice in the City, (London, 1722) 76. 2 Adrian Tinniswood, His Invention So Fertile; A Life of Christopher Wren, (New York, 2001) 147. 3 Inigo Jones added the Cathedral’s western façade in the early 1630’s (Fig. 1).

splinters of stone in all directions, as observed by onlookers4. By the evening hours of Wednesday, September 5th, Old St. Paul’s, along with over 13,000 buildings of medieval London, including the parish churches and majority of secular constructions, were left under ash in blackened ruins. As London’s cinders began to cool and the smoke began to settle, the skeletal remains of Old St. Paul’s emerged. The Cathedral was far beyond repair. Sir Christopher Wren of Wiltshire saw the Fire of London as an opportunity rarely stumbled upon by an architect of such a young age. Pre-fire, at age thirty-four, Wren was commissioned by Parliament to renovate Old St. Paul’s, which included the addition of a massive dome to replace the deteriorating and out dated Gothic tower. However, before his designs could be realized, the city was leveled. Amidst all the destruction and devastation, emerged the opportunity for Wren to design not only the new Cathedral, but also the city as a whole. From urban planning, to re-designing both the secular and non-secular buildings in post fire London; Wren was commissioned to design a new capital city.5 However, the young architect devoted his talents, his time, and most of his effort to one building in particular, one that dominated his life and ultimately enveloped his tomb: St. Paul’s Cathedral.

As Sir Christopher Wren began drafting his final design for St. Paul’s Cathedral, the need for locally harvested, cost efficient and unconsciously ecologically friendly building materials became essential. For over fifty years, the rebuilding of London was financed primarily through a tax levied on the importation of coal as well as the generous donations of private patrons. These 4 Jane Lang, Rebuilding St. Paul’s after the Great Fire of London, (London, 1956) 84. 5 Tinniswood, 150.

funds were strictly controlled and were often too thin for the construction of the city’s new infrastructure.6 Therefore, Wren needed to focus his attention on locally quarried stone and marble, to construct and adorn his cathedral, which could be economically quarried and imported into the city. Due to his economical constrictions, Wren and his employees unintentionally, but effectively, made use of easily accessible, ecological and economically sustainable materials for the construction of the massive cathedral. Portland stone was the primary material for the construction of St. Paul’s Cathedral. Quarried in a little peninsula on the Dorset coast known as the Isle of Portland, the stone rightfully gained its name. As a freestone, it could be cut and carved in both directions with a saw, making it easier to manipulate and handle. However, unlike most freestones, Portland Stone was strong enough to dress the exterior of the cathedral where it needed to endure the exposure to the English elements. Additionally, the quarry at Portland was large enough that “the resources of the Island were more than capable of furnishing all the stone that could possibly be needed for the cathedral”.7 Of all this stone that was available in the Portland Quarry, most size blocks could be excavated without any difficulty.8 In the late sixteen hundreds and early seventeen hundreds, the traditional methods for excavating stone were splitting and cutting. Cutting could be done with a saw whereas splitting (Fig. 2) was a more tedious and time consuming process of drilling holes and boring stakes into them until the stone finally breaches.9 Since the stone from the Portland Quarry was a freestone, it could be 6 Paul Jeffery, The City Churches of Sir Christopher Wren, (London, 1996) 24. 7 Lang, 104. 8 Ibid., 103. 9 Don Dougan, “The Process History”, Don Dougan,

http://dondougan.homestead.com/theprocess4_history.html (Accessed 20 Nov. 2012).

easily cut with a saw. Since cutting stone using this method required less labor and less time then splitting it, making use of this easily quarried material, Sir Christopher Wren maximized the labor of his quarrymen as well as his limited budget. Once cut, the transportation of the stone from the Isle of Portland to the city of London, and internally to the construction site of the cathedral, proved to be both environmentally as well as economically sustainable. Located on the coast, the Portland Quarry allowed Sir Christopher Wren to import the stone by ship, a much cheaper, safer, quicker, and ecological alternative to transporting the stone 140 miles across land. Although the ships chartered from ports along the coast to transport the stone were costly, comparatively, they proved to be much more cost effective then hauling each individual stone across the island.10 Additionally transporting the stone by sea required much less labor then if it were to be transported across the land. The materials used for the construction of Wren’s most massive architectural undertaking, St. Paul’s Cathedral, have proved to be both economically as well as environmentally sustainable. From the labor required to quarry it to the means of its transportation, the stone excavated from the Isle of Portland has become indispensable to the sustainability of the Cathedral as a whole.

Just as the individual resources used to construct St. Paul’s Cathedral could be considered environmentally and economically sustainable, the building and construction methods used to unite these materials into one massive edifice are just as sustainable. Christopher Wren strived to complete the cathedral 10 Lang, 107.

within his lifetime, a difficult feat considering the size of the building and the intensity of its construction. He extended the working season, cutting costs and hastening the construction of the cathedral. He re-used material from Old St. Paul’s, reducing the amount of stone that needed to be cut and lead the needed to be molded. Eventually, he was able to cut the costs, to adapt to his constrained budget, and shorten the time of the cathedrals construction, completing it before his death, and in the process, creating an economically and environmentally sustainable means of construction. After the flames that illuminated the medieval city of London for over five days ebbed to nothing more then cinders, the city ruins became a source for blackened rubble and reusable stone. For the most part, the crumbled remains were far to damaged to serve any structural purpose, especially for a building the magnitude of St. Paul’s. However, as journeymen and unskilled laborers began clearing the remains of Old St. Paul’s, they found a new use for the debris. Christopher Wren devised a plan to infill the walls of the Cathedral with these remains, meaning, the old stone would be neatly stacked between double layers of the new Portland Stone. Not only did this allow the architect to create the appearance of a solidly constructed wall, but it also allowed him to avoid quarrying the massive stones that would have been needed otherwise.11 Therefore, it became essential for the masons on site to sort “through the stones to find material that could be recycled”.12 The recycling of useable materials from Old St. Paul’s cut the cost of its construction tremendously. While very little of the stone was in decent enough condition to be used as primary structure in the cathedral, it was perfect to fill 11 Eduard Sekler, Wren and His Place in European Architecture, (New York, 1956) 124. 12 Tinniswood, 172.

the inner walls. This prevented the quarrying of expensive and difficult to obtain multi-ton blocks of stone, which took far too long and cost far too much to quarry. Therefore, not only did the rubble infill prove to be an economically viable option to a solid wall, it allowed Wren to witness the last stone to be positioned atop the lantern before his death in 1723. Stone was not the only material of Old St. Paul’s that survived the fire, but now, in a new form, the lead that was once used to brace the roof of the Gothic cathedral lie in thousands of molten piles across the debris field. Just as the masons had sorted the scorched stone for useable blocks, laborers had to sift through the debris in search of pieces of lead that would be melted and molded to fit the needs of the new cathedral.13 Just as the reuse of the stone remains of Old St. Paul’s proved economically viable, the reuse of the lead drippings, an estimated six acres, prevented an additional expense to mine lead for the new fittings. Finally, not all of the rubbish removed from the site of Old St. Paul’s was used as infill for the new construction but, like much of the rubble across London, it was used to rebuild roads around the city. The use of the debris as the primary aggregate in roads across London served as a cheap and effective way to rebuild the footprint of the city. Whereas the conservation of the cities economic resources might have been a concern of the architect, the intentional conservation of England’s natural resources during the construction is uncertain. Whether it was his intention or not, Christopher Wren designed a cathedral that utilizes recycled materials in its construction methods, thus creating environmentally sustainable architecture. By utilizing the remains of the old cathedral, Wren prevented the 13 Ibid., 172

depletion of England’s natural resources. Although the Isle of Portland contained enough stone to furnish the construction of the cathedral in its entirety, and then some, its conservation allowed for its use in other buildings across the city, including some of the secular buildings in the city proper. Additionally, the lead remains that were harvested from the decimated site of Old St. Paul’s, prevented the mining of more metal for the new cathedral. Not only did Wren make use of readily accessible, recycled, materials but he also manipulated the time it would take to complete the cathedral by extending the working season into the rainy and snowy winter months. This was accomplished by establishing a “rolling programme of construction” which allowed him to “roof the eastern sections” of the cathedral, which were finished first, “and press ahead with fitting out the interior while the western walls were going up”. 14 This allowed for year-round construction which not only hastened the construction time but also cut costs and minimized the delays caused by winter breaks. The environmental and economical sustainability regarding the construction of London’s new cathedral is irrefutable. The recycling of waste from the old cathedral, both for the new site and for the city around it, has prevented the quarrying and mining of new stone and metal. Not only did this cut the costs of construction but it also prevented the depletion of England’s natural resources. Additionally, the year-round construction reduced the costs of construction and labor. Both the recycling of materials and the extension of the working season proved to be environmentally and well as economically sustainable.

14 Ibid., 277.

10 Like most great and innovative buildings, St. Paul’s Cathedral was heavily

criticized upon its completion forcing one to questions its sustainability in a cultural and social sense. It’s design went through several phases, some more radical then practical, some more practical then beautiful, some endorsed by the king and many rejected by the commissioners. However, what seemed to stay constant throughout the evolving designs was Wren’s love for the baroque cathedrals of France that, at the time, were in high fashion.15 However, even the modern metropolis of London was not ready to adopt the novel architectural styles of the rest of Western Europe, nor did that opulent design conform to the traditions of the English Church. Although the final design of St. Paul’s Cathedral was not as lavish as those cathedral’s in France, it still adopted characteristics before England was ready for them, thus creating a socially and culturally unsustainable architecture. Sir Christopher Wren’s first two designs, the second being his favorite, were considered radical and inappropriate and were hastily rejected by Commissioners. The first being the Greek Cross design (Fig. 3a & 3b), was the most unique and unsuitable building the Anglican Church had ever seen. With an equal nave and transept, the symmetrical and almost circular floor plan (Fig. 4) did not reflect the hierarchy that the Anglican Church was notorious for. Upon rejection, Wren made subtle changes to the Greek Cross design including the extension of the western façade forming the familiar Latin cross design (Fig. 5). Being Wren’s favorite design, the Great Model, as this iteration was referred to, seemed to have been the most developed and advanced of the proposals.16

15 Ibid., 56. 16 Sekler, 112-‐116.

However, like the Greek Cross design, The Great Model was rejected for its radically novel design. The final two iterations of St. Paul’s Cathedral were much more conventional and practical. The Warrant design, as the third rendition was titled, was more practical then the commissioners could ever imagine, yet it was the most unappealing design. The design was much more traditional, with an exaggerated Latin cross design and a Roman saucer dome (Fig. 6). However, in the eyes of Wren, this new cathedral was “as breathtaking in its ugliness as the Great Model was beautiful”.17 The footprint diverted to the gothic way of Cathedral building, indicating that Londoners were not ready for a change. Despite the commissioner’s high adoration for this design, Wren was not going to build it. He began reworking the Warrant design during the summer of 1675. He shortened the footprint of the nave and transept and incorporated common baroque elements of the era, including the simplification of the north and south façade and the inclusion of a massive drum toped with an enormous dome and lantern. This was the design that Christopher Wren and the commissioners settled on; it became known as the Executed Design.18 The executed design was illustrious for its western façade, richly adorned and masterfully decorated in the baroque style. The western portico shows the influence of the baroque cathedrals in France with its highly adorned architectural details that manipulated the light and shadow cast across the building (Fig. 7). In order to counter this opulence of the western façade and appeal to the classical desires of Londoners, in constructing the northern and southern façades, “Wren…attempted to give the whole a consistent external 17 Tinniswood, 196. 18 Sekler, 112-‐116.

appearance by using two storeys of drafted masonry with applied orders” (Fig. 8).19 At first the baroque fabric of the cathedral wasn’t criticized as heavily, but, as the stonework began to rise, public outrage became commonplace. Many were uneasy with Wren’s break in classical traditions. 20 The Cathedral was being criticized for being “too heavy… and too gross”,21 in other words, too baroque. In Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury’s “Letter Concerning the Arts, or Science of Design”, the prominent Whig politician condemned the excessive design of Wren’s Cathedral. Classifying it as nothing more then a “National Ornament” or a “counterfeit Piece of Magnificence”22 Cooper denounces the social sustainability of the Cathedral. From the commencement of the design process for St. Paul’s Cathedral, it became apparent that both England and the Anglican Church were not ready for the sweeping architectural revolution that was being witnessed in the rest of Western Europe. The Baroque cathedrals in France did not appeal to their tastes and the slight resemblances to them seen in St. Paul’s were enough to ignite a battery of complaints. The social upheaval and controversy surrounding its design is enough to suggest that perhaps the building is not culturally sustainable, in that era. The fire that devastated the city of London in 1666 did more then level the medieval city center. It provided the opportunity to rebuild, to construct a glorified city with new landmarks to mark the skyline. From the ashes of one of these most notable markers, Old St. Paul’s, a new cathedral emerged, one of 19 Caroline Elam, A History of Architecture, (London, 1987) 1034. 20 Tinniswood, 316. 21 Daniel Defoe, A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain II, (1724-‐6) Letter V. 22 Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, vol. 3 (1737) “A Letter Concerning the Art, or Science of Design”

massive proportions and innovative and unconventional design. With its construction, St. Paul’s emerged as a fairly complex form of sustainable architecture. While the materials used and the construction methods employed proved to be environmentally and economically sustainable, it has been shown that London was not ready for such a radical design, proving the social unsustainability of the cathedral.

References

Fig. 1: Old St. Paul’s From the West

Lang, Jane. “Old St. Paul’s From the West” Rebuilding St. Paul’s after the Great Fire of London. 1956: p. 12a

Fig. 2: Splitting Stone using Wedges and Hammers

R. Meyer Stoneworks. http://www.rmstoneworks.ca/imag es/01%20splitting%20stone.jpg

Fig. 3a: St. Paul’s, Greek Cross Design, section

Sekler, Eduard. “St. Paul’s, Greek Cross Design, section” Wren and his Place in European Architecture. 1956: Plate 39B

15 Fig. 3b: St. Paul’s, Greek Cross Design, elevation

Sekler, Eduard. “St. Paul’s, Greek Cross Design, elevation” Wren and his Place in European Architecture. 1956: Plate 39A

Fig. 4: St. Paul’s, Greek Cross Design, plan

Sekler, Eduard. “St. Paul’s, Greek Cross Design, plan” Wren and his Place in European Architecture. 1956: Plate 40A

Fig. 5: St. Paul’s, Great Model Design, plan

Elam, Caroline. “Executed Model, Plan” A History of Architecture. 1987. p. 1024

16 Fig. 6: St. Paul’s, Warrant Design, south elevation

Lang, Jane. “St. Paul’s, Warrant Design, south elevation” Rebuilding St. Paul’s after the Great Fire of London. 1956: p. 72b

Fig. 7: St. Paul’s, Executed Design, western façade

Lang, Jane. “The West Front as Exectured” Rebuilding St. Paul’s after the Great Fire of London. 1956: p. 220c

Fig. 8: St. Paul’s, Executed Design, south elevation

Sekler, Eduard. “St. Paul’s, design of side elevation” Wren and his Place in European Architecture. 1956: Plate 48A

Bibliography

Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, vol. 3 (1737) Daniel Defoe, A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain II, (1724-6) Don Dougan, “The Process History”, Don Dougan, http://dondougan.homestead.com/theprocess4_history.html Caroline Elam, A History of Architecture, (London, 1987) Paul Jeffery, The City Churches of Sir Christopher Wren, (London, 1996) Jane Lang, Rebuilding St. Paul’s after the Great Fire of London, (London, 1956) Eduard Sekler, Wren and His Place in European Architecture, (New York, 1956) Adrian Tinniswood, His Invention So Fertile; A Life of Christopher Wren, (New York, 2001) Thomas Vincent, God’s Terrible Voice in the City, (London, 1722)