Sir Christopher Wren : scientist, scholar and architect / by Sir Lawrence Weaver.

  • Lawrence Weaver
Date:
1923
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Sir Christopher Wren : scientist, scholar and architect / by Sir Lawrence Weaver. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    189/232 (page 139)
    WREN ON WOT TON of the old Architect, without any modern mixtures to shew my own Inventions.” His North Transept Front was swept away by Pearson, not to every¬ one’s satisfaction, and though the Gothic grammar of it was inevitably at fault, because he was trying to do something against the current of the times, the failure was not due to any lack of appreciation of Gothic. The existing western towers were not built in Wren’s lifetime and he need not be charged with the defects of their execution by the intro¬ duction of definitely classical cornices and other details of a type which Wren would not have used. So much for Wren as a student of Gothic. I come now to an example of the use he made of other men’s writings. In the library of Shirburn Castle there is a copy of Wotton’s Elements of Architecture, first edition, 1624, annotated by the hand of Sir Christopher himself. It is worth while quoting from these notes in some detail, because they show that Wren was a careful reader and that he was quick to mark every kind of practical application of what he read. The page references are to the first edition of the Elements. Where Wotton says of staircases (on p. 58) that “ the breadth of every single step should never be less than one foot, nor more than eighteen inches,” Wren adds nor so much as eighteen inches at any time, for if a step exceed twelve, those who have but short [legs] must tread twice upon the same step, especially in