SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN
COUNTRY
LIFE
THE CHIEF WORKS OF WREN.
A tribute by C. R. Cockerell, R.A.
SIR
CHRISTOPHER WREN
SCIENTIST, SCHOLAR AND
ARCHITECT
BY SIR
LAWRENCE WEAVER
K.B.E., F.S.A., Hon. A.R.I.B.A.
LONDON
PUBLISHED AT THE OFFICES OF “COUNTRY LIFE,” LTD.,
20, TAVISTOCK STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C. 2,
AND BY GEORGE NEWNES, LTD., 8-11, SOUTHAMPTON
STREET, STRAND, W.C. 2. NEW YORK: CHARLES
SCRIBNER’S SONS
MCMXXIII
Printed in Great Britain
PREFACE
This little book pretends to be neither a Life ofWren nor a detailed record of his achievement.His working years were more than seventy. Atfifteen the inventor of a weather-clock and theauthor of a Theory of Trigonometry which delightedSir Charles Scarborough, he died in his ninety-firstyear, not indeed in professional harness, but stillworking at the multitudinous problems to whichhis life had been devoted.
When the definitive “Life and Works” comes tobe written, it will itself be someone’s life-work, if itis to be adequate.
I attempt no more than to give impressions of themany sides of a great Englishman, and have takenthe liberty to ignore the chronological order whichis fitting in a biography.
My old friend Henry Wheatley pleased himselfwith the notion that people who write get a grosslyunfair share of the world’s praise, for the relativegreatness of men is judged by what writers say ofthem, and writers are obsessed by the importanceof their own craft.
It is also true that architecture has been inEngland an inarticulate trade, and one regarded inour generation as a technical mystery with whichwe are little concerned.
[vi]The greatness of Wren has been obscured by themodesty which checked any inclination he may havehad to enshrine his thought in writing, save in fewand disjointed but admirable fragments on scienceand architecture: in any case his prodigious outputof building left little time for his pen.
It is because Sir Christopher Wren brought to hissuperb architectural accomplishment the equipmentof a mathematician, of a master of natural science,and of a scholar, that it is what it is. He has beencalled th