WREN'S GEMS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 224, 20 September 1940, Page 6

WREN'S GEMS.

DREAMINQ SPIRES. SYMPHONY IN STONE. HOLY PLACES DESECRATED. Inevitable though it -was that, once London began to crumble under the insensate fury of the Jfari "airblitz," the gloriee of historic and ecclesiastical architecture would suffer, nothing of the material destruction wrought since the bombardment began has so angered and saddened" British people as tlw wanton damage done to the city's churches. Their shattered homes the great-hearted people of London can rebuild. Crater* blown in the streets and highways can be filled and eealed. 'Modern blocks of airy flats, exposed to all the sun that shines, will rise out of the ashes and debris of dark, overcrowded tenements. But the historic churches never can be replaced.

Within sound of St. Paul's belle, Wren built 53 churches. Hie'finest ie generally supposed to be St. Stephen's, Walbook, and the loveliest steeple that of Bow Church. The pinnacle of Wren's fame is St. Paul's Cathedral, the family church of the British" Empire, such a lovely and familiar eight even to the untravelled that to describe it ie like describing one's grandfather in his own house. Greatest of Wren's triumphs was the dome of St. .Paul's —aptly called "the" Dome of London." ... ,

: ; -, Spins in Harmony. . Wren'made .London a -sity of magnificent churches, of mounting steeples, towers and spires, whose skyline viewed from the Thames would make a man want to praise God. It i* because Wren's churches had to remain in narrow alleys that h> gave much thought to the spires. As a result, London possesses what no other pity can show— a co-ordinated group, a harmony of all its church epire* conceived by one master builder. Truly here for once it is right to speak of a symphony in stone. These spires are all romance, and inorc truly "dreaming" than those of Oxford.

Westminster Abbey, facing the roaring mainstream of London's traffic, is one of the most beautiful examples of Early English architecture. Its pure beauty is sometimes overlooked by those engrossed in ite historic associations. Here amid the tombs of kings and queens repose the illustrious dead of many ages The Abbey itself, built in many different periods, is a jumble which is typically English. Notre Dame in Paris ia perfectly symmetrical, the Abbey absolutely irregular. The former is restored to its original purity of conception, the latter added to and changed about through all the centuries. Notre Dame Tl , Wry C ° !4 ' BOmew *»fc dead. ,• ■¥? w most u »«qual and vitally •live. The former j 8 » cold grey, the Utter a warm brown. The nave of Notr? Dame is empty, that of the Abbey pvercrowded with monuments, «»od, bad *n<l some.worse than indifferent. Notre while the west front is the Abbey's worst future. In these eontrastsTth« J logie and charms imagination.

Mβ genuinely famous, and all are well it would eeem that this hktori« "It. It had the distinction of havinir foTSi-* 0 th % tiOe ° f ♦m h Of Westminster in 18C9 till the new Westminster. Cathedral was mJ? a %* , * C f d i Was "WWNI from the High Street by » TOVr of nnsisnt "" traeensed w ,ndow, and a Ugh roof with a graceful rider turret.

Keatiag Place of Bible TransUtor. St. Magnue the Martyr, St. Swithin's. Street, St. Dunftan'a in the have offered in more er le« degree. ■*■* U * masterpiece, plctiired in collection of the world'* loveliest the Martyr, Y. well known ae an%dvaneed Anglo Catholic stronghold, which c*me uito prominence at the time of Prayer Book retisjon. It ha* an eclectic congregation, drawn from all part* of London. There, in a thin mjst of wcen«v ae the vested clergy move before the altar in the agee-old ritual <high Anglicans worship in a manner Illrf AM i"° eau . iv : a,en t in the few Anglo-Catholic in New Zeah«id. Whhin its walls, built by Wren in 1676, i* buried Mil/ Coverdale, Bfehop of. Exeter? the BMe **** verfion of

Where Cromwell Wae Married. years later, w a rectangular church. o™JW?**^? l **** was once one of the eighte of It was %? tS A m k m ? with «SS Nowadays the eojoure have faded, and the dome is merely commonplace St M «y »t jaiH-so Underex woSd «v •t the fcuijt in 107277. It, too, hae been damaged. the headquarter* church of the Church Army, and the incumbent is the Rev. Prebendary Carlile. St. Augustine Watluig Street, though «ot in Wren's finest style, ha* a beautiful spire. Riohard H. Barham, author of the Ingrfdeby Legends," wae the ineumbent from 1842 till 1845.

St. Giles, CMpplegate, built in 1545, contains Elizabethan and Jacobean monumente. It is the hurial place of Vox, Milton and Frobfeher. There Cromwell wae married and Defoe buried. St. Punetan'e,. in the East, u* a graceful church in the Gothic manner—one of Wren's few excursions into this stvle, which he disliked.

St, Mary Woolnoth, built by Nicholas Hawksnroor, a pupil of Wren, wae another church damaged hy a bomb, anjl is the place of safe-keeping for the banners of the Honourable Company of Goldsmith*. This old church stands in the enormously busy qpctien of Lomhra, Met o< the B*nk of En^MuL