WREN TERCENTENARY

Dominion, Volume 25, Issue 264, 3 August 1932, Page 5

WREN TERCENTENARY

Service at St. Paul’s CHURCHES HE BUILT The three-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Sir Christopher Wren on October 20 will be celebrated by a special service at Evensong at St. Paul’s Cathedral. Members of the Royal Institute of British Architects, the Royal Academy, the Wren Society, the London Society, and others will attend, and it is expected that the Lord Mayor will be present. The Royal Institute of British Architects have just had presented to them by the Wren Society the Ninth Volume of the Society. It is the first of, two that are being devoted to the parochial churches of Sir Christopher Wren. After the Great Eire, Wren, as Sur-veyor-General, was employed to rebuild not only St. Paul’s, but fifty-four parish churches within the bounds of the. City, many of which have already, been destroyed. This volume, edited by Mr. Arthur Bolton and Mr. Duncan Hend/y, is a scholarly record of Wren’s great work. Ip it are ineluded beautiful reproductions of his original drawings and those made about a hundred years ago by John Clayton, who. under the inspiration of C. R. Cockerell, R.A., the first architect president of the R.1.8.A., himself measured up and drew all the chief remaining churches. There are, in addition, reproductions of some twenty of the destroyed churches from a book of engravings by C. Clarke, dated 1820. The Wren Society, which has been busily carrying on its researches into the life and work of Sir Christopher Wren, has just produced its ninth volume in the Wren tercentenary year. This one is dedicated to the Royal Institute of British Architects, and it provides a great deal of hitherto unpublished, or inaccessible, information on Wren’s city churches. The subject is dealt with exhaustively. Hardly a stone has been left unturned, or, rather, unphotographed. In the presentation of the new volume to the R.1.8.A., Mr. Arthur T. Bolton (the curator of the Soane Museum), who has been most active on this research into Wren’S work, said that several important facts had come to light regarding the building of St. Paul’s. It is now established that the whole of the interior of the Cathedral was originally painted by Wren’s orders; the painting being stripped off in the nineteenth century. Moreover, it is evident that Wren had very little to do with the final finishing of the Ctfthedral. He was persona grata at court during the many reigns which he witnessed, but only until the accession of Queen Anne, when, finally discouraged by the ignorance of those in authority and the intrigues at Court, he definitely gave up visiting the Cathedral in 1711. . He was. in fact, strongly opposed to the balustrade round the dome, which was added during the period in which be 1 was superseded.