Tag Archive | St Paul’s
14 September 2013  

Dome-ception at St Paul’s

On Monday, my family and I went to St. Paul’s Cathedral and were there for about four hours.  You get an audio guide with the entrance fee and it’s pretty detailed and fascinating. I took some pictures of the outside previously (no photography inside) and this iteration of St. Paul’s, designed by Christopher Wren, is best- known for its dome.

St. Paul's

St. Paul’s

Wren wanted a dome this big on the outside to be impressive, but knew that it would be too big inside to see anything painted on the ceiling, so there is actually a dome inside of this one, which is what you see inside. This is surrounded by a cone structure full of wooden supports, which you walk through when climbing the stairs to the outside galleries and in which I saw one fire extinguisher, which did not seem like it would be quite sufficient. And then outside of that there is this outer dome. And the whole thing is supported by the columns inside the church.

Along the edge of the dome (as well as along other parts of the ceiling leading up to the dome and behind the altar) are “mosaics”, pictures made from nearly a million tiny pieces of coloured glass that catch the light and shine. I particularly enjoyed the ones in the Quire (the Quire is apparently the part of the church where the choir resides. The more you know) depicting animals from land, sea and air. There are no mosaics on the inside of the dome itself, however, because that was deemed too popish (ie. too Catholic).  So for those of you keeping track, £78 000 (in 1890; roughly £8 million today) is not popish, but any more than that and Catholicism starts to set in. Instead there are monochrome paintings designed to look like stonework that depict various events in the life of St. Paul.

A lot of the wood sculptural detail was done by Grinling Gibbons, who is the same guy who did some of the woodwork at Hampton Court, part of which was also designed by Christopher Wren. I was aware that Wren had built a huge part of London, but I had never heard of Gibbons before. I can’t decide which version of the relationship I’ve imagined for them in my head I like better: the one where they were really close friends and kept recommending each other as craftsmen and insisting on working together; or the one where they barely knew each other but just like one day Gibbons would show up for work and when he would see the tall columns or the domes he would get this familiar feeling and he would walk in and sure enough Wren would be standing there. “You again,” he would sigh.

Anyway, behind the Quire is the high altar and off to one side is a Henry Moore sculpture of Madonna and Child, which is a bit unusual since Moore wasn’t particularly religious.

What I found maybe most interesting is how the church really is a gathering place for the city and how even though they are Anglican, they take pride in their community role and attempt to make everyone welcome. Historically it has been the site for large public funerals like those of Nelson, Wellington and Churchill. They were sites of celebration at the end of the World Wars and the people of London worked to keep the dome intact during the Blitz (parts of the church were hit by bombs, including near the high altar, but fires were put out quickly). It was one of the main places people gathered after 9/11 and there was a large memorial service for the victims of the 2005 London bombings. In 1999, there was a Christian memorial service for King Hussein of Jordan in which the Qur’an was read.

And from the floor of the church, you can climb ~250 steps to the Whispering Gallery, named supposedly because if someone whispers against the wall at one side of it, they can be heard at any other point along the wall, but my Dad and I tried it and it didn’t seem to work. Maybe we didn’t get close enough. Anyhow, from the Whispering Gallery, you can climb another 120 steps to the Stone Gallery and a further 150 to the Golden Gallery, where you can walk around the outside of the dome and view the city. Or, you could if it was a city other than London that wasn’t cloudy and misty half the time.

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Finally, in the basement is the Crypt, where you can have lunch. No, seriously. You can pick up a sandwich and sit in a little touristy cafeteria type area right next to some statues and near some memorial stones; it’s a bit surreal. Also in the crypt is a separate chapel, created during the expansion of Old St Paul’s (ie. in 1256) when the cathedral took over land from the parish of St. Faith’s but promised them they would have a place to worship at the end of the crypt. This agreement was honoured even when the new St. Paul’s was built, but is now the Chapel of the Order of the British Empire.

Also in the crypt are a number of tombs and memorials, the most prominent of which belong to Nelson and Wellington. Wren is also buried there, along with Robert Hooke, an experimentalist who worked with Wren frequently. I could go on listing names, but I will limit myself to mentioning that Sullivan of Gilbert and Sullivan fame is buried there, which might seem strange if, like me, you were unaware that he composed the hymn Onward Christian soldiers. I wonder if this means I can request Modern Major General at the next Carol Sing.

After St Paul’s, we went to the Clockmakers’ Museum. The old City of London is big on guilds, including the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers. Clocks here included a watch with decimal time (10 hours), a “self-winding” clock where the ticks resulted in zinc being lowered into sulfuric acid to produce hydrogen gas that drove the zinc back up to start ticking down again, and one of the chronometers used by George Vancouver to map Vancouver Island. However since London seems to have buildings and buildings full of clocks on display, perhaps details are best left for another time. Get it? Time? Clocks? Okay.

14 August 2013  

Various Things, Mostly the South Bank and Westminster

I had a pretty busy weekend.  As August goes on, I just keep thinking that the weather won’t be this nice forever and I have to take advantage while I can.  The rest of London seems to feel the same way and summer festivals are in full swing.  I headed out to the National Theatre’s August Outdoors even on Friday, where there was a dance/acrobatic performance:

They also had some street art and other things when I went back on Saturday:

Friday I wandered the South Bank and up to St. Paul’s.  Saturday I wandered through Barbican and Cheapside back to the South Bank, over to Westminster and then strutted my stuff up the Strand.  Here are some of the more unusual things and things off the beaten path:

This is sort of near my new hood, in Angel
I’m not sure it’s the most lifelike Bruce Willis drawing I’ve ever seen, but points for the pun
Not only do they try to lessen the blow of the no busking rules with whimsical quotations…
…but they use different quotes on each sign.
Hee. Outside the Tate Modern
Barbican Complex
You know, just hanging, out, drinking some tea and playing some ping pong outside this giant arts centre, as you do.
Creepy
Mendelssohn’s tree. Apparently he used to sit under it to compose, including A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but in 1990 it was felled by a storm in Burnham Beeches and moved.
I like the juxtaposition, the acknowledgement that you can’t save everything from the past, but the new always builds on the old. Rebuild after the fire (as you can given money and time). Rebuild over the Roman influence.
Also seen here: Temple Bar, the only surviving gateway to the City of London, although it was replaced after the fire and then moved in 1878 because it was impeding traffic (kind of admire that they didn’t put historical sentimentality before practicality).
Cheapside has your food-based street signs covered.
For whatever reason, I think this is a great restaurant name.
Something about the phrase “at pleasing prices” seems so very British.
I can’t be the only one who navigates by novels. We have left behind Sherlock Holmes and are entering the world of Lizzie Bennet’s Aunt and Uncle.
You know when you’re walking along South Bank and you start wondering “Is this the REAL Southbank?” Rest assured.
This place need a better PR guy. They don’t even claim to be the best winebar under London Bridge, just the only one.
Move out of my way people. I’m trying to get a picture of the quote!
Borough Market. I was excited someone was selling salsa, but it was 4 Pounds for a tiny jar, so I skipped that.
I did get lunch at Borough Market though.
“We want some sort of London mascot. What can we do?” How about a phone box? “Okay, but what else?” Uh, bowler hat? Good, but more. Monocle? Perfect!
Westminster Bridge, Parliament and in the background Westminster Abbey. If I may draw your attention to the large number of people on the bridge: it was just reaching peak tourist time.
Line to spend 90 minutes inside the London Dungeon on a gorgeous day.
Just me and a few thousand of my closest friends.
Time to head a little off the beaten track and away from the afternoon tourist crowd. Cool cyclist statues in Archbishop’s Park, not quite grown yet.
A smaller model, more filled in.
Why is everything a scheme here? A toilet scheme? Really? Now you’re just putting me on.
Boooo. The Rodin statue is on loan. To the Henry Moore Foundation for some joint Moore/Rodin exhibit, which actually sounds kind of cool but is sadly not in London.
Democracy! Also, Trivial and Hilarious Organized Crime Bills are still in the Second Reading.
The “stick a gargoyle on it” period is one of my favourite architectural periods.
Somehow, at the time, it felt like more people than this crushing me.
Some dude on a column. I kid I kid. End of the day. Getting punchy. Nelson’s column, Trafalgar Square
And the latest exhibition on the fourth plinth: a giant blue… rooster. All I can think when I see a giant rooster (as you so often do) is it’s full of whimsy: http://thebloggess.com/2011/06/and-thats-why-you-should-learn-to-pick-your-battles/
Example of annoying addresses. Argh!
And we end the day at a very important building. No, not the Royal Courts of Justice…
…the Twinings Tea Shop and Museum!
Word, Dostoevsky.
You should always visit the Twinings shop last so people don’t wonder why you’re walking around with a bag with a naked lady on it (on closer inspection she is wearing a very light coloured dress).

Also, just outside Borough Market, a man playing Für Elise on the wine glasses:

And here are some of the more conventional sightseeing locales: