Sir Christopher Wren

It is of some interest to attempt to form a picture of Wren, not as a great artist in building, but as a professional architect dealing with clients who were often awkward and sometimes dishonest, like the St. Paul’s authorities in his later years, carrying out a vast amount of detail work which is now regarded as the task of the surveyor rather than the architect, making arrangements for the settlement of disputes, boundary lines, frontages, and for compliance with Royal Proclamations and Acts of Parliament, negotiating with clients as to fees, and generally dealing with the financial and business side of his profession.

All his biographers have emphasised the undoubted fact that Wren was not a self-seeking man, but I think they have a little overdone the suggestion of altruism. It is said in Parentalia and elsewhere that Wren’s salary of £200 a year for the work of designing and superintending St. Paul’s was a very modest sum. That is true, but it must be remembered that the salary ran from 1675, when he was appointed Surveyor-General and Architect of St. Paul’s, until 1711, when the House of Commons determined that the Cathedral was completed. He, therefore received £7,200 in respect of St. Paul’s. It is also stated in Parentalia that he received £100 a year for work on the City churches. But this seems to be wholly untrue, for Wren was paid on exactly the same basis as an architect of to-day—i.e., by a commission on the value of the work executed. Until 1919, when it was raised to 6 per cent., the customary remuneration of an architect in England was 5 per cent.; and a manuscript account, covering the period from July, 1670, to March, 1673, quoted by Wyatt Papworth, shows that twelve-pence in the pound for all monies received and paid was disbursed “for allowances for rebuilding the Churches to the Officers of Works for the management of the whole.” This is 5 per cent., out of which Wren no doubt paid for his office staff. As the total expenditure on the City churches was £263,786, Wren must have received over £13,000. In addition, the City authorities would now and again give to him (or in one case to Lady Wren) a lump sum by way of expressing their gratitude for his services.

In the capacity of Surveyor-General of His Majesty’s Works, he was receiving, in 1675, 13s. 2d. a day and “availes” of £80 per quarter, which meant another £320 a year, by way of retaining fee; and Papworth presumes, I think with reason, that he also received specific payment in respect of each service performed. By the year 1715, his salary and “riding charges” had dropped to £136 a year, but it is also to be remembered that all this time he had an official residence in Whitehall consisting of sixteen rooms and a cellar, which he occupied for about fifty years without cost to himself.

In respect of Chelsea Hospital he received a fee of £1,000, but there are many examples of his refusing payment altogether. He insisted on doing all the work at Greenwich Hospital without payment, saying, “Let me have some share in an act of charity and mercy.” When he came to design the Library of Trinity at Cambridge, for which the Master had some difficulty in getting enough subscriptions, Wren’s contribution was the value of his own work, for which he made no charge; and, similarly, he received nothing in respect of his work at St. Clement Danes. These are acts of generosity of which we happen to have definite record, and I do not doubt that there were many other examples of the same sort not recorded, for Wren’s generosity was equalled only by his modesty.

He was not above a trifling piece of nepotism; for his son Christopher became Deputy Clerk Engrosser in the Office of Works in 1694 and Clerk of Works in 1702, succeeding Dickenson. This appointment was confirmed by George I. in 1715. But when Sir Christopher fell from favour his son was also dismissed, and from the younger Christopher’s casual proceedings in the compilation of the material of Parentalia, I cannot believe that the State suffered greatly from his disappearance.

During thirty-two years of Wren’s professional career, Nicholas Hawksmoor was his domestic clerk, which we may take to mean that he was in charge of Wren’s office and his right-hand man, both in designing and in the financial supervision of the works. It would appear that he performed a good many of the duties which now fall to the separate profession of quantity surveyor. I suspect that, for example, the payments to the various contractors for the City churches, and possibly also for St. Paul’s, were certified by Wren after the value of the work done had been examined by Hawksmoor. It seems certain that the very elaborate accounts of the City churches, with which I have dealt fully in Archæologia, were actually written out by Hawksmoor himself.

By Wren’s time, the practice of architecture had been organised generally on lines which were developed notably by the brothers Adam, very competent business men, and have been elaborated in very modern times. But substantially the methods remain the same except that contracting has equally been developed so that separate tradesmen are now merged in a general contractor in England. In Scotland Wren’s way still prevails to a large extent. There was nothing slapdash about Wren’s methods: everything was recorded in the most orderly and detailed manner. If materials delivered to St. Paul’s were for any reason transferred to one of the City churches, most careful entry was made in the accounts of the quantities and values, and the necessary debits and credits were taken into account when the contractors’ bills were settled. Wren was as efficient in business details as he was in design.

If my memory does not deceive me (and some thieving friend has made it impossible for me to verify my reference), it was Mr. G. K. Chesterton, in Biography for Beginners, who made moving comment on an imaginative picture of Wren in the act of being helped into a fur coat by an obsequious flunkey, as follows:

Perhaps the major part of his long life of work was taken up by far less attractive tasks, for he was His Majesty’s Office of Works and His Majesty’s Office of Woods and Forests of his day rolled into one. The Privy Council called on him for reports on questions of all kinds. Elmes ploughed through a manuscript book of the Council’s transactions on almost every page of which Wren’s name appears. One Mr. Berkehead wanted to build a house and brew-house at Knightsbridge. Was this in contravention of His Majesty’s proclamation? No, it was too far out of town, and Mr. Berkehead may proceed. May Mr. Sleymaker build on an old foundation in Brick Lane? He gets his permission. Sir Richard Stydolfe had improperly started building at the rear of St. Giles’s Church leading from thence to Piccadilly. May he go on? The Surveyor-General goes off to St. Giles’s, examines the whole matter and reports that he should be so licensed “provided the said Sir Richard Stydolfe build regularly, according to direction and according to a design to which his said licence may refer; that he be obliged to build with brick, with party walls, with sufficient scantlings, good paving in the streets, and sufficient sewers and conveyances for the water ...” and so forth and so on. The Colonel Panton who gave his name to Panton Street was in similar trouble, but Wren found that the Colonel’s building scheme would “cure the noysomeness of the place” and “the design of the building shewn to me may be very usefull to the publique.” Wren was constructive in everything he did, and did not merely deal with the current business that was referred to him. Some builders in Soe Hoe “(surely a pleasanter spelling than Soho)” were building small and mean habitations, “receptacles for the poorer sort and the offensive trades” and rendering the government of these parts more unmanageable. His Majesty’s Sergeant Plumber was much upset about the manifest decay of the waters in the expenseful drains and conduits of Whitehall Palace which resulted from these nefarious proceedings in Soe Hoe, and Wren supported him with a petition. Soe Hoe had gone too far. His Majesty in person, His Majesty’s royal brother and Prince Rupert, and the Archbishop of Canterbury and others in full council, looked into the matter, met more than once about it. Wren was ordered to see that obedience be given to His Majesty’s proclamation: failing which, he was to imprison the workmen for contempt.

Lord Rochester asks him to examine the bills for repairing the Royal stables, and Wren goes through them and finds “the particular prices very reasonable, one thing with another.”

But sometimes Wren must have been bored. Finding lodgings for Mr. Ronchi at St. James’s was hardly a task for the creator of St. Paul’s, but he found them. In 1679 he was in professional touch with the troubles that followed the finding of Sir Edmondsbury Godfrey dead in a ditch. Papists’ plots were in the air. The Spanish Ambassador became highly unpopular, and the Lords’ Committee appointed to look into “the late horrid conspiracy” ordered Sir Christopher Wren and Edward Warcup, Esq., to put padlocks on all such doors as open out of Mr. Weld’s house into the Ambassador’s house.

So “we repaired to Wild-house and having viewed the dores ... we affixed padlocks ...” and much more to the same effect, “all which we humbly submit.” I am glad to add that His Excellency showed great civility to Wren in the character of locksmith. In all these proceedings, as Elmes justly remarks, “the honour, integrity and public spirit of Wren appear transcendent.”

I must add a word about Wren as a draughtsman. The drawings which can with certainty be attributed to his own hand show him to have been a competent but not a good performer. A man so immersed in multifarious work had no time for the niceties of the drawing-board, and it is probable that his details were drawn roughly in the shops of his contractors or “on the job,” as the work progressed. The idea was complete in his own mind, and with workmen used to his words and wishes verbal instructions on his frequent visits would forward the work without the elaborated drawings and details of a modern contract. Differences were adjusted by the simple methods of trade measurement in use. But that he attached great importance to drawing as an element in a liberal education is shown by a reference in Christ’s Hospital Committee Book, and it is delightful to find here once more the association of Wren and Pepys.

“At a committee of the Schooles in Christ’s Hospitall, the 30th November, 1692, ... Mr. Treasurer acquainted the committee that he had two letters one from Sir Christo. Wren and the other from Esq. Pepys declaring their opinions concerning the introducing the art of drawing among the Boyes.”

Wren’s letter, which Mr. Nathaniel Hawes read aloud to the Committee, is as follows:

This is a strong plea for the teaching of drawing in schools, but there is, as always, the same practical comment. Draughtsmanship is of value as the foundation of the “mechanick arts,” but it comes next to “good writing.”