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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 April 2016
Ever since the publication of Parentalia in 1750 it has been taken for granted that all the ‘fifty-one parochial churches of the City of London’ listed there by Christopher Wren, junior, were indeed ‘erected according to the Designs, and under the Care and Conduct, of Sir Christopher Wren’. That Wren could not personally have designed every detail of so many churches has long been recognized, and it is well known that in most cases the fittings, and in some even the architectural details, were designed by the craftsmen employed. Even if Wren ‘originated the design of every church’, ‘in many cases the working out and supervision was done by somebody else’ — generally by Robert Hooke or Edward Woodroffe, or after Woodroffe’s death in 1675, by John Oliver, Wren’s deputy as Surveyor of St Paul’s Cathedral. Of the many surviving drawings, relatively few are in Wren’s own hand. Some are clearly by Hooke, whose characteristic draughtsmanship is fairly easy to recognize, some no doubt are by Woodroffe, and some must be by the draughtsmen named in Wren’s accounts for rebuilding the churches: first William Walgrave, who in or about 1673 was paid £2 10s. ‘for taking the ground platts of 12 churches yet unbuilt’, then Henry Hunt, who received £6 10s. for thirteen similar plans in 1676/77, and finally Thomas Lane, who between 1676/77 and 1682 was regularly paid ‘for coppying the Designes of severall Churches’, then ‘for drawing the designes for severall Churches’, and finally for ‘drawing and making designes for severall Churches’.
1 Parentalia, or Memoirs of the Family of the Wrens, compiled by Christopher Wren, Jr, but published by Stephen Wren (1750), p. 309.
2 Summerson, John, Sir Christopher Wren (1953), pp. 82–83 Google Scholar.
3 Bodleian Library, MS. Rawlinson B.389, ff. 115-23v. Henry Hunt is mentioned more than once in Hooke’s diary. On 12 April 1675 Hooke ‘left at Sir Ch. Wren’s the 14 Ground plats of churches Harry [Hunt] had drawn’ ( Diary of Robert Hooke, ed. Robinson, & Adams, , 1935, p. 257 Google Scholar). Thomas Lane may or may not have been a joiner ofthat name employed by Wren at St Paul’s Cathedral.
4 Bodleian Library, MS. Rawlinson B.388, ff. 11-12, 103-04.
5 In his report on Westminster Abbey, made in 1713 (Wren Society, XI, 20). In the context of Wren’s report, which was largely concerned with his proposals for a central tower and spire, the examples of Gothic design that he had chiefly in mind could well have been the steeples of St Alban, Wood Street (1682-85), St Dunstan-in-the-East (1697-99) and St Mary Aldermary (1701-04, see below) rather than the bodies of any of these churches.
6 Whichcord, John, ‘Church of St. Mary Aldermary, Bow Lane’, Trans. London & Middlesex Archaeo-logical Soc., 1 (1860), 264 Google Scholar.
7 London Vast and Present, 1 (1891), 491.
8 R.C.H.M., , London, vol. 4 (The City), 81 Google Scholar.
9 Harben, H. A., A Dictionary of London (1918), p. 389 Google Scholar.
10 Stow, John, Survey of London, ed. Kingsford, (1908), 1, pp. 252-53Google Scholar.
11 Stow, John, Survey of London, ed. Strype, (1720), Book III, p. 18 Google Scholar.
12 Guildhall Library, MS. 6574. The contracting masons were Henry Walton and Thomas Leech.
13 Norman, P., ‘St. Mary Aldermary’, Trans. St Paul’s Ecclesiological Soc, VIII (1917)Google Scholar.
14 Guildhall Library, MS. 4865/1; Bodleian, MS. Rawlinson B.389, f. 115.
15 Diary of Robert Hooke, ed. Robinson, & Adams, , 1935, p. 209 Google Scholar.
16 Guildhall Record Office, ex-Guildhall Library MS. 307 and Misc. MS. 157.14; Wren Society, X, 12-13.
17 Guildhall Library, MS. 4863/1, under years cited.
18 Cal. State Papers Domestic 1672, p. 263.
19 P.R.O., PROB 11/340, f. 391 (PCC 157 EURE).
20 P.R.O. Chancery Decrees and Orders, 1679, B., f. 46v (C33/254).
21 Ibid.
22 Guildhall Record Office, ex-Guildhall Library MS. 320 and Misc. MS. 157.6. The 18 surviving orders together account for an expenditure of some £3,852.
23 Guildhall Library, MS. 4863/1 (churchwardens’ accounts of St Mary Aldermary), MSS. 662/1 and 663/1 (churchwardens’ accounts and vestry minutes of St Thomas the Apostle).
24 Drafts of the inscription by Sancroft are in Bodleian, Tanner MS. 89, f. 240. It may be regretted that in the end Sancroft rejected an alternative wording which acknowledged Anne Rogers’ faithful discharge of her duties as her uncle’s executrix.
25 For Oliver’s architectural career see Colvin, H., A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600-1840 (1978), p. 601 Google Scholar.
26 Illustrated in Wren Society, XI, pl. v (initialled ‘W.D.’ and dated 1722).
27 Birch, G. H., London Churches of the XVIIth and XVIIIth Centuries (1896), p. 147 Google Scholar. Profiles of some of the original mouldings will be found in Whichcord’s article cited above.
