APPENDIX II
AN ATTEMPT AT A WREN CHRONOLOGY
The dates of Wren’s work have been set down so wildly that I prefer the omission of some buildings to the repetition of blunders. Even so I have no doubt repeated many old mistakes and made some fresh ones. An accurate chronology of Wren would be of great comfort to the student. I have checked only forty-seven of Miss Milman’s dates, but found forty-five of them wrong, by from one to twenty-five years.
The City churches are given under the year during which the first payment to the builders was made: the dates in brackets mark the last of such payments, which may well have been some years after the buildings were completed. Wren seems to have settled final accounts in batches.
L. W.
1632. Birth of Sir Christopher Wren, October 20.
1642. Entered Westminster School.
1647. Invention of weather-clock.
1649. Entered Wadham College.
1651. B.A.
1653. M.A. and Fellow of All Souls.
1654. Meets John Evelyn at Oxford.
1657. Appointed Gresham Professor of Astronomy.
1658. Attempt to solve Pascal’s problem.
1660. Royal Society founded in Wren’s room at Gresham College.
1661. Appointed Savilian Professor of Astronomy.
D.C.L., Oxford and Cambridge.
Appointed Assistant to Sir John Denham, Surveyor-General.
1662. Offer of Tangier surveyorship refused.
Appointed to survey old St. Paul’s.
1663. Doorway, Ely Cathedral.
Pembroke Chapel, Cambridge, begun.
Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford.
1665. Trinity College, Oxford: new court.
Visit to Paris (July).
1666. Return from Paris (March).
Report on old St. Paul’s (May), and First Design for dome over crossing.
The Great Fire (September).
Prepared new Plan of London.
Appointed Surveyor-General and Principal Architect for repairing St. Paul’s, the City churches, and other public buildings.
1668. Emmanuel Chapel, Cambridge (1677).
Repairs to Salisbury Cathedral Spire.
1669. First Marriage: to Faith Coghill, December 7.
Appointed Surveyor-General of the King’s Works.
1670. St. Olave’s, Jewry (1679).
St. Dunstan’s-in-the-East (1671).
St. Michael’s Wood Street (1687).
St. Mary Aldermanbury (1686).
St. Mary-at-Hill (1676).
St. Christopher’s (1675).
St. Vedast Fosters (1673).
St. Sepulchre’s (1677).
St. Mary Woolnoth (1677): the pre-Hawksmoor church.
St. Mildred Poultry (1679).
St. Benet Fink (1681).
St. Mary-le-Bow (1680).
St. Lawrence Jewry (1686).
St. Bride’s (1684).
St. Dionis Backchurch (1686).
St. Michael’s Cornhill (1677).
St. Edmund the King (1679).
St. Sepulchre’s (1677).
“Rejected Design” for St. Paul’s.
Temple Bar.
1671. St. Nicholas Cole Abbey (1681).
St. George Botolph (1679).
St. Mary-le-Bow Steeple (1683).
St. Magnus (1687).
The Monument.
Wren meets Grinling Gibbons.
1672. St. Stephen’s Walbrook (1687).
Wren knighted (or possibly 1674).
1673. St. Paul’s: “Model Design” approved by King (afterwards rejected).
Trinity College Library, Cambridge.
1674. St. Bartholomew Exchange (1686).
St. Stephen’s Coleman Street (1681);
St. James Garlickhithe (1687).
Honywood Library, Lincoln Cathedral.
1675. St. Paul’s: “Warrant Design” approved by King and first stone laid.
Birth of son Christopher. Death of first wife.
Greenwich Observatory.
1676. St. Anne and St. Agnes (1687).
St. Michael’s Queenhithe (1687).
St. Michael Bassishaw (1682).
1677. Christ Church (1691).
St. Peter’s Cornhill (1687).
St. Benet Paul’s Wharf (1685).
St. Martin’s Ludgate (1687).
All Hallows the Great (1687).
St. Swithin’s (1687).
All Hallows Bread Street (1687).
Second marriage: to Jane Fitzwilliam, February 24.
Birth of daughter Jane, November.
1678. St. Antholin’s (1691).
Design of Charles I.’s tomb.
1679. Kilmainham Hospital, Dublin.
Birth of son William.
1680. St. Austin’s (1687).
Death of second wife, October.
St. Clement Danes.
1681. St. Mildred Bread Street (1687).
St. Benet’s Gracechurch (1687).
St. Mary Abchurch (1687).
St. Matthew’s Friday Street (1687).
Tom Tower, Christ Church, Oxford.
Sworn in as President of the Royal Society, January 12.
1682. St. Alban’s Wood Street (1687).
Chelsea Hospital begun.
Latin School, Christ’s Hospital.
1683. St. James Piccadilly.
St. Mary Magdalen Old Fish Street (1687).
St. Clement’s Eastcheap (1687).
Palace at Winchester begun but not completed.
1684. St. Margaret Pattens (1689).
St. Michael’s Crooked Lane (1694).
Appointed Controller of Works, Windsor Castle.
Middle Temple Gateway.
Repairs to Chichester Cathedral Spire.
1685. St. Andrew’s Wardrobe (1695).
1686. St. Margaret’s Lothbury (1693).
St. Mary Somerset (1694).
All Hallows Lombard Street (1694).
St. Michael’s Royal (1694).
1688. Town Hall, Windsor.
1689. M.P. for Windsor.
1690. Hampton Court begun.
1690. Kensington Palace.
1691. Chapel, Trinity College, Oxford.
1693. Library, Queen’s College, Oxford.
1694. Chapel, Trinity College, Oxford.
1695. Greenwich Hospital begun.
Morden College, Blackheath.
1697. St. Paul’s: Choir opened for service, December 2.
1698. Marlborough House, London.
North Transept front, Westminster Abbey.
1700. M.P. for Weymouth.
1703. Death of daughter Jane.
1704. Orangery, Kensington Palace.
1710. St. Paul’s: top-stone of Lantern laid.
1711. St. Paul’s: nominal completion.
1717. St. Paul’s: Wren’s complaint to Commissioners against the Balustrade.
1718. Dismissed from Surveyorship.
1723. Death of Wren, February 25.