Sacred Architecture of London

320 Pages·2012·7.18 MB·English

by  Nigel Pennick

Sacred Architecture of London
First published 2012
by Aeon Books
London NW3
www.aeonbooks.co.uk
© Nigel Pennick
All photographs, drawings and prints are by Nigel Pennick, except where
noted. All archive engravings are reproduced with permission from The
Library of the European Tradition.
The moral right of the author has been asserted
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
without permission in writing from the publisher
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A C.I.P. is available for this book from the British Library
ISBN-13: 978-190465-862-7
Sacred Architecture
of London
Nigel Pennick
Aeon Books

Contents
Introduction 1
1 Legend, Precepts and Principles 5
2 Spiritual Principles: Place, Times and Form 26
3. Number, Measure and Harmony 45
4 The Sacred Art of Geometry in Action 75
5 Practical Geometry Techniques 104
6. Symbols and Emblemata 128
7 Towers and Steeples 168
8 Masterworks of a Superior Order 231
Postscript 277
Bibliography 281
Appendix 1: Glossary of technical terms 301
Appendix 2: A chronology of London classical church
building 305
Appendix 3: London multi-stage steeples completion dates
311
St Mary Le Strand silhouetted, looking east.
IntroduCtIon
In the year 1666, between the second and the sixth of
September, the greater part of the city of London was
destroyed by an unstoppable conflagration, which soon became
known as the Great Fire of London. The Tablet of Memory,
published, in London, by J. Bew in 1774 tells us that it “burnt
down 113,000 houses, the city-gates, guildhall &c. 86 churches,
among which was St. Paul’s cathedral, and 400 streets; the ruins
were 436 acres…”. After the catastrophes of the Civil War, the
tyranny of Cromwell, the plague of 1665, and the maritime
wars against Holland, the fire came as yet another ordeal for
the city’s inhabitants. But instead of destroying their will to
continue, the reconstruction that followed this major disaster
resulted in an unprecedented outburst of creativity. From the
period after the fire come the most remarkable sacred build-
ings erected in England since the reformation, churches built
according to ancient classical principles. The main creative
period was around 1670 to 1750, but the tradition continued
until 1792. The churches built after the Great Fire of London
express a spiritual dimension of religion that goes beyond
sectarian belief. They can be seen to be epitomes of all the
cosmos, and of divine creation.
In parallel with fundamentalist interpretation of any partic-
ular religion as exclusively and unquestionably true (depend-
ing, of course, on which particular religion and sect the true
believer belongs to), there is always another parallel current of
understanding that tells of an eternal tradition, manifesting in
characteristic form in that religion but not bound to its particu-
lar doctrines. This universal current is therefore embodied in
any sacred building that is constructed according to true prin-
ciples, whatever deity the building is dedicated to. Although it
is used by various religions as a means of expressing the infi-
nite according to the particular interpretation of each cult, sect
2 Sacred architecture of London
or faith, this tradition is transcendent of religious doctrine. For
it is based on universal symbols rather than the ever-changing
revisions and interpretations of scripture imposed upon func-
tional religions by external events and politics. This eternal,
universal tradition appears historically in interlinked ways in
Pagan, Jewish, Christian and Islamic places of worship and
sepulture. As Sir Christopher Wren (1632-1723) notes of the
ancients: “Not only their Altars and Sacrifices were mystical,
but the very Forms of their Temples”.1
Hence, in the West, the temple archetype has been used by
most sects of the Pagan, Jewish, Christian and Muslim reli-
gions as the appropriate form for what are viewed as vessels
of the divine light, which is timeless and transcendent, Sir
Christopher Wren’s “attribute of Eternal”.2 This does not
mean, as is frequently suggested, that there is some kind of
secret apostolic succession of the esoteric, hidden in an unbro-
ken form from antiquity to the present day, (as manifested
in eighteenth century Masonic writings, nineteenth century
theosophical texts, and some twentieth century ‘Rosicrucian’
and wiccan ones). Rather, it indicates that universal symbols
and ideas, as well as practical knowledge, reappear when the
conditions are right. In human perception, the spiritual is the
timeless, universal quality of being. Naturally, there has always
been continuity between succeeding generations, together
with interchange between creative individuals, both through
personal contact and distant media, but this has never been art
of a rigid system. Rather, it is free and opportunistic.
As with all cultural manifestations of the spirit, past and
present, the spiritual works of post-Great Fire London were
pluralistic, crystallizing in a certain way suited to the era. The
many sources and currents that came together then were the
1 Sir Christopher Wren, in Christopher Wren Jr. (ed.): Parentalia, or,
Memoirs of the Family of the Wrens, London, 1750, Tract IV.
2 Ibid. 261.
introduction 3
result of various parallel developments and cross-influences, a
living, growing, changing and developing set of ideas, beliefs,
techniques and practices that were not fixed, but open to new
insights and creative interpretations. Things made by human
hands to embody the universal laws of the cosmos can recon-
cile our transient mundane existence with the transcendent.
Through the presence of such meaningful elements in mate-
rial culture, we can perceive the essential nature of our being.
Only an ensouled artefact can embody this spirit in a palpable
form. It has the power to reach outside itself towards humans,
who can perceive it not only as an embodiment of the culture
from which it has emerged, but also as a particular instance of
the universal.
The complete meaningful body of work of the London
churches of this period is not just restricted to those relatively
few that still exist in the twenty-first century. The totality of
the work is relevant: the architects’ researches, sketches, plans,
preliminary or unbuilt projects and written descriptions as well
as the constructed buildings. Of those built, not only the extant
ones are significant, but also those that have been altered,
destroyed or demolished and those that remain as fragments or
ruins. Subsequent oral lore, writings and books about them are
equally part of their total cultural meaning. They include later
maps, measured plans, artwork and photographs; subsequent
history, customs and usages, stories, poems, legends, theories,
superstitions and fictional writings. The existing buildings are
just the physical core of a much greater and generally unrec-
ognized reality.
These London churches are part of a then emergent Deist
current that was instrumental in the formation of Masonic
doctrine, with God being viewed non-sectarianly as the Great
Architect of the Universe whose principles take material form
through number and geometry. This symbolism appears in a
poem by George Herbert (1593-1633), The Church Floore, which