Wren’s Reconstruction of London After The Great Fire

St Paul's Cathedral by Raygee78 from Pixabay

Our ancestors were not such slow-coaches or so deficient in energy as many people think, and no sooner had the Fire ceased, than plans for the new city were laid before the King by John Evelyn and Christopher Wren; neither, however, being accepted.

It took almost four years to reconstruct London, and although the new streets unfortunately followed too closely upon the lines of the old, they were wider; and brick, instead of timber, was largely employed.

Wren's architectural genius left its mark upon fifty-three city churches (not counting St. Paul's Cathedral), and upon other buildings in the metropolis, far too many to particularize.

But it is almost safe to attribute to him or to his pupils, all buildings, ecclesiastical or otherwise, at all ancient looking, within a mile of the Bank.

Bow Church, St. Dunstan's-in-the-East, between Tower Street and Upper Street, St. Stephen's Walbrook at the rear of the Mansion House, and the College of Arms on the same side further east, the southern portion of Kensington Palace, Chelsea Hospital, and Marlborough House, are fair examples, the last named built of Dutch bricks, which can be plainly seen in the lower stories.

These bricks are smaller than those used in England, redder in colour, and in Wren's time, cheaper, so that the thrifty Duke of Marlborough had them brought over as ballast in the hired transports coming and going between Holland and Deptford during his campaign.

After the Great Fire, as wealth increased, the town, in spite of Royal decrees to the contrary, extended its boundaries in a marked degree to the west.

The nobility gradually left the city and the neighbourhood of the Strand, and began to establish themselves round about the Court of St. James', and were not slow to discover the advantages of this district with its coffee and chocolate houses, its fashionable taverns, and its proximity to the Park.

Soon the entire north side of Pall Mall was built over. The march towards the setting sun, a peculiarity of most English cities, had commenced; where to terminate, in the case of London, who can tell!

Imperial London, Arthur Henry Beavan, 1901