WREN’S BUILDINGS

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXX, Issue 13670, 18 June 1942, Page 2

WREN’S BUILDINGS

WITHSTANDING NAZI ONSLAUGHT

“Looking across the Thames from the site of the house where Sir Christopher Wren, seventeenth-cen-tury architect and designer, watched the growth of St. Paul’s Cathedral, one sees to-day that, despite the havoc wrought by Nazi bombs, the domes and spires of nearly all his famous churches still grace the metropolitan skyline. Of the 35 Wren churches standing in 193 9, IS, including St. Paul’s Cathedral,' are either intact, or have sustained only slight damage as the result of Nazi raids. The remaining 17 have been badly damaged by lire or high explosives, but so well did Wren carry out his work, as designer, scientific engineer, and practical architect, that the towers and steeples have, with few exceptions, withstood the onslaught. Great cavities torn in buildings round about have in some cases revealed to the casual observer for the first time the beauty and symmetry of Wren’s designs.”—Miss M .Spraggs, in Christian Science Monitor.