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Construction
Construction of Old St Paul's Cathedral
medieval cathedral of the City of London
- 1087
- Europe
Construction
medieval cathedral of the City of London
Fetching the article from Wikipedia…
Old St Paul's Cathedral was the cathedral of the City of London that, until the Great Fire of 1666, stood on the site of the present St Paul's Cathedral. Built in 1087 and from 1255 to 1314, it was dedicated to Paul the Apostle. The building was perhaps the fourth such St Paul's cathedral church at this site on Ludgate Hill, going back to the 7th century.
Work on the cathedral began after a fire in 1087, which destroyed the previous church. Work took more than 200 years, and over that time the architecture of the church changed from Norman Romanesque to early English Gothic. The church was consecrated in 1240, enlarged in 1256 and again in the early 14th century. At its completion in the mid-14th century, the cathedral was one of the longest churches in the world, had one of the tallest spires and some of the finest stained glass.
The continuing presence of the shrine of the 7th century bishop Saint Erkenwald made the cathedral a site of pilgrimage in the Middle Ages. In addition to serving as the seat of the Diocese of London, the building developed a reputation as a social hub, with the nave aisle, "Paul's walk", known as a business centre and a place to hear the news and gossip on the London grapevine. During the Reformation, the open-air pulpit in the churchyard, St Paul's Cross, became the place for radical evangelical preaching and Protestant bookselling.
The cathedral was in structural decline by the early 17th century. The spire was destroyed by fire in 1561 and not replaced. Restoration work begun by Inigo Jones in the 1620s was temporarily halted during the English Civil War (1642–1651). In 1666, further restoration was in progress under Sir Christopher Wren when the cathedral was devastated in the Great Fire of London. At that point, it was demolished, and the present cathedral was built on the site.
Old St Paul's Cathedral was perhaps the fourth church at Ludgate Hill dedicated to St Paul. A devastating fire in 1087, detailed in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, destroyed much of the cathedral. King William I (William the Conqueror) donated the stone from the destroyed Palatine Tower on the River Fleet towards the construction of a Romanesque Norman cathedral, an act sometimes said to be his last before death.
Bishop Maurice oversaw preparations, although it was primarily under his successor, Richard de Beaumis, that construction work fully commenced. Beaumis was assisted by King Henry I, who gave the bishop stone and asked that all material brought up the River Fleet for the cathedral should be free from toll. To fund the cathedral, Henry I gave Beaumis rights to all fish caught within the cathedral neighbourhood and tithes on venison taken in the County of Essex. Beaumis also gave a site for the original foundation of St Paul's School.
Henry I's death was followed by a period of unrest and civil war known as "The Anarchy". Henry of Blois, Bishop of Winchester, was appointed to administer the affairs of St Paul's. Almost immediately, he had to deal with the aftermath of a fire at London Bridge in 1135. It spread over much of the city, damaging the cathedral and delaying its construction. During this period, the architectural style was changed from heavy Romanesque to Early English Gothic. Although the base Norman columns were left alone, lancet pointed arches were placed over them in the triforium and some heavy columns were substituted with clustered pillars. The steeple was erected in 1221 and the cathedral was rededicated by Bishop Roger Niger in 1240. This steeple was reputedly measured at 520 feet (158 m) high in 1312.
After a succession of storms, in 1255 Bishop Fulk Basset appealed for money to repair the roof. The roof was rebuilt in wood, which ultimately ruined the building. At this time, the east end of the cathedral church was lengthened, enclosing the parish church of St Faith, which was now brought within the cathedral. The eastward addition was referred to as "The New Work".
After complaints from the dispossessed parishioners of St Faith's, the east end of the west crypt was allotted to them as their parish church. The congregation were also allowed to keep a detached tower with a peal of bells east of the church which had historically been used to peal the summons to the Cheapside Folkmote. The parish later moved to the Jesus chapel during the reign of Edward VI and was merged with St Augustine Watling Street after the 1666 fire.
This "New Work" was completed in 1314, although the additions had been consecrated in 1300. Excavations in 1878 by Francis Penrose showed the enlarged cathedral was 586 feet (179 m) long (excluding the porch later added by Inigo Jones) and 100 feet (30 m) wide (290 feet (88 m) across the transepts and crossing).
The cathedral had one of Europe's tallest church spires, the height of which is traditionally given as 489 feet (149 m), surpassing all but Lincoln Cathedral. The King's Surveyor, Christopher Wren (1632–1723), judged that an overestimate and gave 460 feet (140 m). In 1664, Robert Hooke used a plumb-line to calculate the height of the tower as "two hundred and four feet very near, which is about sixty feet higher than it was usually reported to be." William Benham noted that the cathedral probably "resembled in general outline that of Salisbury, but it was a hundred feet longer, and the spire was sixty or eighty feet higher. The tower was open internally as far as the base of the spire, and was probably more beautiful both inside and out than that of any other English cathedral."
According to the architectural historian John Harvey, the octagonal chapter house, built about 1332 by William de Ramsey, was the earliest example of Perpendicular Gothic. This is confirmed by Alec Clifton-Taylor, who notes that the chapter house and St Stephen's Chapel at the medieval Westminster Palace predate the early Perpendicular work at Gloucester Cathedral by several years. The foundations of the chapter house were recently made visible in the redeveloped south churchyard of the new cathedral.
The finished cathedral of the Middle Ages was renowned for the beauty of its interior. Canon William Benham wrote in 1902: "It had not a rival in England, perhaps one might say in Europe."
The nave's length was particularly notable, with a Norman triforium and vaulted ceiling. The length earned it the nickname "Paul's walk". The cathedral's stained glass was reputed to be the best in the country, and the east-end rose window was particularly exquisite. The poet Geoffrey Chaucer used the windows as a metaphor in "The Miller's Tale" from The Canterbury Tales, knowing that other Londoners at that time would understand the comparison:
His rode was red, his eyen grey as goose, With Paule's windows carven on his shoes In hosen red he went full fetisly.
From the cathedral's construction until its destruction, the shrine of Erkenwald was a popular pilgrimage site. Under Bishop Maurice, reports of miracles attributed to the shrine increased, with the shrine attracting thousands of pilgrims. The alliterative Middle English poem St Erkenwald (sometimes attributed to the 14th-century "Pearl Poet") begins with a description of the construction of the cathedral, referring to the building as the "New Werke".
The shrine was adorned with gold, silver and precious stones. In 1339, three London goldsmiths were employed for a whole year to rebuild the shrine to a higher standard. William Dugdale records that the shrine was pyramidal in shape with an altar table placed in front for offerings.
Monarchs and other notables were often in attendance at the cathedral, and the court occasionally held sessions there. The building was also the place of several incidents. In 1191, whilst King Richard I was in Palestine, his brother John summoned a council of bishops to St Paul's to denounce William de Longchamp, Bishop of Ely – to whom Richard had entrusted government affairs – for treason.
Later that year, William Fitz Osbern gave a speech against the oppression of the poor at Paul's Cross and incited a riot which saw the cathedral invaded, halted by a plea from Hubert Walter, Archbishop of Canterbury. Osbern barricaded himself in St Mary-le-Bow and was executed, after which Paul's Cross was silent for many years.
Arthur, Prince of Wales, son of Henry VII, married Catherine of Aragon in St Paul's on 14 November 1501. Chroniclers are profuse in their descriptions of the decorations of the cathedral and city on that occasion. Arthur died five months later, at the age of 15, and the marriage was later proved contentious during the reign of his brother, Henry VIII.
Several kings of the Middle Ages lay in state in St Paul's before their funerals at Westminster Abbey, including Richard II, Henry VI and Henry VII. In the case of Richard II, the display of his body in such a public place was to dispel rumours that he was not dead. The walls were lined with the tombs of bishops and nobility. In addition to the shrine of Erkenwald, two Anglo-Saxon kings were buried inside: Sebbi, King of the East Saxons, and Æthelred the Unready.
A number of figures such as John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster and John de Beauchamp, 1st Baron Beauchamp de Warwick had particularly large monuments constructed within the cathedral, and the building later contained the tombs of the Crown minister Nicholas Bacon, Sir Philip Sidney, and John Donne. Donne's monument survived the 1666 fire, and is on display in the present building.
The first historical reference to the nave, "Paul's walk", being used as a marketplace and general meeting area is recorded during the 1381–1404 tenure of Bishop Braybrooke. The bishop issued an open letter decrying the use of the building for selling "wares, as if it were a public market" and "others ... by the instigation of the Devil [using] stones and arrows to bring down the birds, jackdaws and pigeons which nestle in the walls and crevices of the building. Others play at ball ... breaking the beautiful and costly painted windows to the amazement of spectators." His decree goes on to threaten perpetrators with excommunication.
By the 15th century, the cathedral had become the centre of the London grapevine. "News mongers", as they were called, gathered there to pass on the latest news and gossip. Those who visited the cathedral to keep up with the news were known as "Paul's walkers".
According to Francis Osborne (1593–1659):
It was the fashion of those times ... for the principal gentry, lords, courtiers, and men of all professions not merely mechanic, to meet in Paul's Church by eleven and walk in the middle aisle till twelve, and after dinner from three to six, during which times some discoursed on business, others of news. Now in regard of the universal there happened little that did not first or last arrive here ... And those news-mongers, as they called them, did not only take the boldness to weigh the public but most intrinsic actions of the state, which some courtier or other did betray to this society.
St Paul's became the place to go to hear the latest news of current affairs, war, religion, parliament and the court. In his play Englishmen for my Money, William Haughton (d. 1605) described Paul's walk as a kind of "open house" filled with a "great store of company that do nothing but go up and down, and go up and down, and make a grumbling together".
Infested with beggars and thieves, Paul's walk was also a place to pick up gossip, topical jokes, and even prostitutes. In his Microcosmographie (1628), a series of satirical portraits of contemporary England, John Earle (1601–1665), described it thus:
[Paul's walk] is the land's epitome, or you may call it the lesser isle of Great Britain. It is more than this, the whole world's map, which you may here discern in its perfectest motion, justling and turning. It is a heap of stones and men, with a vast confusion of languages; and were the steeple not sanctified, nothing liker Babel. The noise in it is like that of bees, a strange humming or buzz mixed of walking tongues and feet: it is a kind of still roar or loud whisper ... It is the great exchange of all discourse, and no business whatsoever but is here stirring and a-foot ... It is the general mint of all famous lies, which are here like the legends of popery, first coined and stamped in the church.
By the 16th century the building was deteriorating. Under Henry VIII and Edward VI, the dissolution of the monasteries and Chantries Acts led to the destruction of interior ornamentation and the cloisters, charnels, crypts, chapels, shrines, chantries and other buildings in the churchyard.
Many of these former religious sites in St Paul's Churchyard, having been seized by the crown, were sold as shops and rental properties, especially to printers and booksellers, such as Thomas Adams, who were often Protestants. Buildings that were razed often supplied ready-dressed building material for construction projects, such as the Lord Protector's city palace, Somerset House.
Crowds were drawn to the northeast corner of the Churchyard, St Paul's Cross, where open-air preaching took place. It was there in the Cross Yard in 1549 that radical Protestant preachers incited a mob to destroy many of the cathedral's interior decorations. In 1554, in an attempt to end inappropriate practices taking place in the nave, the Lord Mayor decreed that the church should return to its original purpose as a religious building, issuing a writ stating that the selling of horses, beer and "other gross wares" was "to the great dishonour and displeasure of Almighty God, and the great grief also and offence of all good and well-disposed persons".
Text from the Wikipedia article “Old St Paul's Cathedral”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.