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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 April 2016
A bound volume containing unsigned drawings has recently come to light in the Guildhall Library. It contains twenty-three drawings: seven are for St Paul’s Cathedral, the remainder being towers and steeples, many of them readily identifiable as for City of London churches. The drawings were acquired by the library in February 1886 when they were described as ‘Drawings of Plans, Elevations & Sections of St Paul’s Cathedral with some of the Churches in London erected by Sir Christopher Wren, by James Gibbs’.
1 The word ‘steeple’ does not have a unique meaning. In this paper, for convenience, the word is used solely for that part of the structure which rises above the church tower and is separated from it by a well-defined feature such as a battlement, parapet, balustrade or main cornice.
2 CLRO Minutes of Library Committe 1885-86, vol. 28, 24 February. The book was purchased for the sum of £1 1s. od., probably from Bradley J. Batsford, bookseller and publisher. The present company, Batsford B.T. Ltd, has no records from the period of its acquisition and no earlier owner has so far been traced. The spine of the volume carries the City Arms, the form of which indicates that it was bound at some unknown date in the period between the two world wars by the Guildhall Library. The pagination, which has been done in what seems to be a Victorian hand, suggests that prior to this the drawings were in an earlier binding with a title page in the same hand.
The volume carries the name ‘Granger’ in a modern hand written on the inside of the cover. This is a press mark and relates to an earlier location of the volume in a ‘Granger Room’ of the library, a room that housed a collection of ‘Granger’ engraved portraits. There is no suggestion that the drawings could have been in the possession of the collector James Granger, Vicar of Shiplake in Oxfordshire, 1723 to 1776, known principally for his ‘Biographical History of England’ published in 1769. His collection, as evinced by the catalogue of sale (9-15 April 1778, BL Prints & Drawings) did not contain architectural drawings.
3 John Grover, Clerk of Ingrossment at the House of Commons, 1733 and Clerk of the Committee of Privileges and Elections, 1740 (W. R. McKay, Clerks in the House ofCommons, 1361-1989: A Biographical List, House of Lords RO Occasional Paper No. 3, (1989), p. 52). He is known as the purchaser of drawings at the Wren sale of 1749, including drawings for St Paul’s Cathedral later acquired by a printer, Alexander Strahan, and purchased in 1767 by Robert Mylne ‘for the use of that Fabrick’. They are now in the Guildhall Library (Kerry Downes. Sir Christopher Wren: The Design of St Paul’s Cathedral (1988), p. 11). He was, presumably, also the Grover who is listed as the purchaser of lots 41 and 42 at the sale (WS XX, p. 79.).
The possibility exists that the twenty-three drawings of this volume may have formed a part of the Wren collection of drawings. No lots containing this number of drawings are listed, but they may have formed a sub-set of a larger group. Alternatively, Grover may have purchased them at the Hawksmoor sale of 1740 (see note 5).
4 i. e. the half sheets carry one or the other mark, full sheets carry both. Pieter Van der Ley was one of the earliest of Dutch ‘white paper’ makers, establishing his mill at Zaandyk in 1665. Succeeding generations of the Van der Ley family continued to produce high quality paper in a number of mills until the early years of the nineteenth century. A variety of watermarks was used including Pro Patria, Concordia, Post Horn, Foolscap as well as the Strasburg lily and the Arms of Zaandyk, Amsterdam, the Seven Provinces, and even London and England. At this period the extensive use of large numbers of similar marks by many papermakers in Holland, France and elsewhere (determined apparently by the market) and the variations between them are insufficiently characterized to enable any precise dating to be deduced from them. Churchill, W. A., Watermarks in paper in the XVII and XVIII Centuries (Amsterdam, 1935)Google Scholar; Heawood, Edward, Watermarks of the 17th and 18th Centuries, The Paper Publications Society, Hilversum (Holland, 1950)Google Scholar; Voorn, Henk, De Witpapiermolens De Bonsem, De Wever en Het Fortuin en de Familie Van der Ley, De Papierwereld (1956), vol. 10, pp. 286–287 Google Scholar; vol. 11, pp. 12-17, 39-44.
5 The drawings may have been in the possession of Nicholas Hawksmoor. At his death his collection of approximately 2,000 drawings was sold at auction. In the sale catalogue ( Downes, Kerry, Burlington Magazine, xcv (1953). PP. 332-35Google Scholar) most of these were said to be by Hawksmoor himself, although some were attributed to others. Two of the items offered for sale were of twenty-three drawings. Item 118 is marked ‘Twenty-three Designs by Mr. Hawksmoor’ with no further identification. Item 258 is marked ‘Twenty-three [Designs] of St Paul’s Church by ditto [Hawksmoor]’.
6 BL K. Top. XXIV. 6.
7 H. M. Colvin, A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600-1840 (1978), p. 792.
8 Colvin, H. M., ‘The church of St Mary Aldermary and its rebuilding after the Great Fire of London’, Architectural History 24 (1981), pp. 24–31 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
9 BL MS Sloane 4024.
10 GL General accounts MS 25543.
11 As Wren II.6.
12 I am grateful to Peter Draper for drawing my attention to this.
13 Colvin, H. M., Oxoniensia, (1954), xix, pp. 112-15Google Scholar.
14 RIBA, Cavendish-Bentinck loan.
15 Bodleian MS Top. Oxon. a.48.f.74.
16 Including St Bride, Fleet Street 1702-03, Christchurch, Newgate, 1703-04, St Magnus-the-Martyr, 1705-06, St Vedast, Foster Lane, 1709-12, St Stephen Walbrook, 1713-17, St Michael Paternoster Royal, 1713-17 and St James Garlickhithe, 1714-17 (dates from Kerry Downes, The Architecture of Wren (1982), pp. 129-31).
17 H. M. Colvin, Unbuilt Oxford (1983), p. 64.
18 Bodleian G.A.Oxon. a.69.
19 Jeffery, P., The Church of St Vedast-alias-Foster, City of London (The Ecclesiological Society, 1989)Google Scholar.
20 The tower of St Michael, Crooked Lane was completed in 1697–98 but the steeple was not added until 1709–14. The bulbous flask-shaped design was similar to that added to St Augustine, Old Change, for which rejected designs are in Hawksmoor’s hand.
21 K. Downes, The Architecture of Wren (1982), p. 117.
22 Ibid., p. 117.
23 K. Downes, Sir Christopher Wren: The Design of St Paul’s Cathedral (1988), cat. no. 154 (Bute 8a, 8b).
24 GL Commissioners orders, MS 25540, 25 October 1677.
25 GL Ibid., 30 November 1685; Building accounts MS 25539/2 and 25539/11.
26 GL Commissioners orders MS 25540, 10 October 1681; Building accounts MS 25539/10.
27 P. Jeffery, The Church of St Vedast.
28 The ‘first stone’ was laid by Thomas Strong, mason and John Longland, carpenter ( Hatton, E., A New View of London, (1708), 11, p. 456 Google Scholar). Work on the new cathedral must have begun soon after 19 May 1675 when the Commissioners ordered Wren to ‘immediately sett out the Ground & cause the Foundation to be laid … and pursue the Work with all Diligence…’ (GL MS 25622/1).
29 SirSummerson, John, Burlington Magazine, CIII (1961), pp. 83–89 Google Scholar.
30 GL Building accounts, MS 25539/3.
31 AS Wren II.53.
32 GL Building accounts, MS 25539/3.
33 Ibid., MS 25539/12.
34 BL K. Top. XXIII. 19.
35 GL Building accounts, MS 25539/1.
36 Ibid., MS 25539/12.
37 John Clayton, c. 1848, reproduced in WS IX, S.50.
38 In Henry Maitland, A New and Complete History and Survey of the Cities of London, Westminster and the Borough of Southwark and Parts Adjoining (1771).
39 Godwin, G. and Britton, J., The Churches of London (1839), vol. 11 Google Scholar.
40 GL St Michael Bassishaw vestry minutes, MS 2598/3.
41 AS Wren II.52.
42 Ibid., Wren II.45.
43 Ibid., Wren II.47.
44 Ibid., Wren I.67.
45 GL Building accounts, MS 25539/4.
46 Ibid., MS 25539/9.
47 Hatton, E., A New View of London (1708), 11, pp. 423-25Google Scholar.
48 GL MS 25539/12.
49 BL K. Top. XXIII.30.
50 GL Prints and Maps.
51 J. Betjeman, The City of London Churches (1974), p. 32.
52 SirSummerson, John, ‘Drawings of London Churches in the Bute Collection: a Catalogue, Architectural History, vol. 13 (1970), pp. 30–42 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; K. Downes, Sir Christopher Wren, The Whitechapel Art Gallery (1982), Cat. No. 27: All Souls College, Oxford, Wren IV.88; WS ix, pl. 36.
53 GL Building accounts MS 25539/4.
54 Ibid., MS 25539/12.
55 Ibid., MS 25539/1.
56 Ibid., MS 25539/12.
57 BL K. Top. XXIV. N0.6.
58 GL Building accounts, MS 25539/1.
59 Ibid., MS 25539/12.
60 P. Jeffery, St Vedast.
61 References are to catalogue numbers in K. Downes, Sir Christopher Wren: The Design of St Paul’s Cathedral (1988).