FUTURE LONDON

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23809, 9 November 1940, Page 8

FUTURE LONDON

WORK OF REBUILDING GREAT FIRE RECALLED WREN AND HIS GENIUS

BY G.O.

AVhen the German "besom of destruction" has done its work over London there will still be a lot of mess to clear away. How will London tackle the task ? The answer was given nearly 275 years ago. The great fire of London broke out in the dark of the early morning of September 2, 16G6; it swept westward, consuming St. Paul's Cathedral, and stopped at Temple Bar on September 6. Within that four days plans for replanning and rebuilding London had been prepared and submitted to Charles 11. as modern a monarch for his day as he was a merry one. Wren's plan was accepted—but not carried out as he had originally conceived it. More was the pity! But of that later. Always An Individualist London was burned clean out, and the two most popular reasons for the disaster were a divine visitation on the city for its sins and a token of divine mercy in that the fire was sent to purify London of the plague—which it certainly did. But the Londoner was ever an incorrigible individualist, for the citizens returned to sites occupied by their dwellings and shops. They began rebuilding while the ruins were still hot and smouldering, being in no mind to wait for any planning or new lay-out. They took matters into their own hands, for the Lord Mayor of the time was no leader. All he could do while London was a-burning was to wring his hands and cry: "Lord! what can 1 do? 1 am spent and my people pay nie no heed."

Eight Great Roads

The people began rebuilding London, but not according to the plan that Wren put upon paper for posterity to admire, for Paris much later to emulate in its less grand but impressive Place do l'Etoilo and radiating noble roadways. Wren would have had what he called a piazza of eight sides with eight roads crossing it, and four of those roads 90ft. wide. One of those roads, from west to east, began at Temple Bar crossed the Fleet Ditch, climbed Ludgate Hill and at the top met two more roads also of 90ft, and so passed on to the Tower. In the fork, on the crest of the Hill, Wren proposed, and succeeded in placing, his new St. Paul's, on the site of tho old, but the original design was grander and suggestive more of St. Peter's in Rome than the existing building, which .is still a superb example of its style of architecture and and is a symbol expressive of much more than art to all who know it. The legend goes that in preparing the site for the new St. Paul's workmen dug

up part of a tombstone bearing the word "Resurgam." Wren was so impressed by the coincidence that he had the word carved in association with a phoenix rising from flames and the sculpture was used to adorn the pediment over the south portico. There it is to this day—if the bombs of the Hun have not defaced it.

For reasons of its own the British Ministry of Information has not given overmuch in detail or specifically of damage or destruction of public buildings and monuments in London. Perhaps this reticence is just as well. A full and grievous catalogue will surely come later. Early as it may be to act along practical lines for the rebuilding of London in part, it- is questionable if there be another Wren in waiting to dominate the style of the newbuildings, ecclesiastical or other, but especially the business buildings and offices of the London to be. Every style and no style of architecture were to be seen in its streets, but there was this to be said for all of them: they emphasised the individualism of its citizens. Wren certainly left his mark 011 many city churches and even on the twin towers of Westminster Abbev; but it would be interesting and entertaining, were Ruskin alive to-day, to hear his views on a London that ought to be. Yet for over a century London has been rebuilding, to the mystification of the returned native who finds himself, even after only a year or so away, having to ask about things. What will remain permanent of London, however, and that which no blitzkrieg will ever efface, are the impressions made on the minds of Londoners and all others who have trod its ways, who have penetrated into its corners, and discovered some of its beauties.

London will surely rise again. "Resurgam" is its word, its only word, for to-day. As the Great Fire swept away much that was spiritually and materially discreditable to so great and nobly placed a rity, .so the present purging ns by fire may bring about acceleration of the removal of slums and the brightening of vast drab areas. It may be that provision will have to be made for a vast underground city and the Cockney be turned into a troglodyte if warfare in the air is continued. But whatever the future may be, tho things that will remain will be memories, not only in mind but in more permanent form of print, paint, and pencil, reminding posterity when it smiles at the ways of other days to do not merely as well by and for London, but to do better than was done before it suffered this present, fiery tribulation.