CHAPTER 7: WORCESTER, YORK & ST. PAUL'S WITH A FEW CAR JOURNEY COLLECTIONS

"Lector, si monumentum requiris circumspice" - Reader, if you would seek my monument, look around you. These words appear on the memorial to Sir Christopher Wren who is buried in the crypt of his rebuilt St Paul's Cathedral in the heart of the city of London. We were on a two family day trip to London so all eight of us entered the cathedral together. We'd decided that we'd climb up to the top of the dome first before Sue informed us that she'd rather not bother with lots of steps. She'd have a quick look round the cathedral and then head off for a bit of shopping instead. The rest of us were OK with that and began the gentle ascent up the wide wooden spiral steps. After climbing for ages, we reached the Whispering Gallery. Here, due to the shape of the inner dome and the acoustics, it's possible for a person on one side of the dome to whisper a message into the wall and for a person on the other side, some distance away, to hear it perfectly. A the children and I engaged in this rather interesting phenomenon whilst H took the opportunity to look over the side down to the floor many metres below and feel sick, a sudden fear of heights overtaking her. She now withdrew from our party, choosing to sit bolt upright against the wall until our return. A, the children and I continued our upward journey eventually reaching the Stone Gallery where we were able to step outside and enjoy the wonderful views. Then it was up to the Golden Gallery, the small outside balcony at the base of the lantern that sits on top of the dome. the 528 steps were now a twisting and turning metal structure much smaller and much steeper. When Wren designed the cathedral, he built an inner dome which is the one you can see inside the cathedral, painted with murals depicting the life of St Paul. He built the outer dome that is such a part of the London skyline and, to support the lantern on top and to strengthen the whole area, he built a third brick dome between the two. It was this dome that our steps were mounted on. Eventually we emerged onto the Golden Gallery with magnificent views of London in all directions. Today, it's easy to get a bit blasé about seeing London from the air with various views from the Shard, the London Eye, the Walkie Talkie sky garden, even the top of Tower Bridge. Back then, St Pauls was about the only one. You could and still can climb to the top of the Monument, the tall column that commemorates the 1666 Great Fire of London, the conflagration that destroyed old St Paul's. Many years before, before the IRA bombed it in 1971, you were able to reach the top of what was then called the Post Office Tower, the tallest building in London at the time. I remember doing this as a child and being amazed by the views. They'd installed helpful display boards that explained exactly what you could see, unlike the balcony we were now on which was just a balcony. It was left to A and I to point out the landmarks to the children before beginning our descent, collecting wobbly H on the way. 

Whilst we'd been on the top of St Paul's looking out, there are many places in London where you can look into the city and see St Paul's, The Houses of Parliament and the Tower of London through the protected views scheme. This was introduced in 1938 to ensure that the tall buildings that had started being constructed didn't obstruct the views of these iconic buildings. So there are uninterrupted views from the top of both Primrose Hill and Parliament Hill in north London with the oldest and longest viewing corridor running from King Henry's Mount in Richmond Park, south of the river, a location I came across by accident on a walk through the park. St Paul's is tiny but you can just make it out about ten miles away. The building at 122 Leadenhall Street is nicknamed the Cheese Grater because of its triangular wedge shaped design and the reason for the strange shape: so as not to disturb the protected view of St Paul's from Fleet Street. Back in the main body of the cathedral we had plenty to admire before descending further into the crypt, the largest in Europe. Here are the tombs of national heroes Nelson and Wellington, both instrumental in the defeat of Napoleon, both given state funerals. A state funeral is usually reserved for British monarchs with Nelson and Wellington being part of an exclusive group of commoners granted the honour. The most recent which I watched on television was that of Winston Churchill. Nelson was buried first, in prime position under the dome. The black sarcophagus where his remains lie had originally been commissioned by Cardinal Wolsey, but out of favour and buried at Leicester Abbey, he never got to use it. After about 300 years in storage it was recycled for Nelson. Wellington's impressive tomb took longer to construct than it did to build the cathedral. There are many other notable Brits who have tombs, or memorials if they are buried elsewhere, including Florence Nightingale, the artists Sir Joshua Reynolds and Turner, Alexander Fleming who discovered penicillin, composer Arthur Sullivan, William Blake and Lawrence of Arabia. Surprisingly, there are no Royal burials here. Whilst the city of London was the commercial hub of country and empire, the settlement up river at Westminster was its power base. For many centuries, the two were separate entities, linked by the Thames and by a slightly dodgy road that followed a strand of land behind the riverside palaces and mansions. The church of St Martin-in-the-Fields that today fronts Trafalgar Square was just that for much of its existence  - in the fields. 

The crypt also contained 'The Great Model', a scaled down version of architect Sir Christopher Wren's design for the cathedral, made in case anything untoward a happened to its creator. Constructed from oak, plaster and lime wood at a scale of 1:25, it wasn't Wren's only design and there are significant differences between the model and the real thing. Wren was a gifted scientist and mathematician who was already a professor of astrology at Gresham College in London by his mid twenties. One of the founding members of the Royal Society, whose members included the finest minds of the day, Wren developed a keen interest in architecture and in 1664 he was asked to design the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford along with a chapel for Pembroke College,  Cambridge. Subsequently, architecture became the main focus of his work and he became heavily influenced by the Baroque buildings he saw on a visit to Paris. The Great Fire provided him with great opportunities and in addition to St Paul's, he designed 51 new churches in the burnt out remains of the city. He also produces innovative new plans for restructuring the city's streets with two broad boulevards linking plazas like the ones he'd seen on his visit to Paris. He also proposed a grid system of streets to replace the jumble of narrow medieval streets and alley to create a city of "pomp and regularity'". There were other designs submitted including one by the writer John Evelyn. Charles II made Wren one of six commissioners tasks with overseeing the rebuilding of the city but pretty soon the land owners started asserting their rights and began rebuilding on their bits of land. There was little appetite or money to challenge this in the courts and so the higgly piggly street patterns survived, albeit with the proviso that the streets needed to be wider and the frontages of houses could no longer be built of wood. Wren lived in a house at what is now 49 Bankside, on the other side of the river during the construction of St Paul's. It is more or less where the Millenium footbridge now crosses the river and Wren would no doubt have been fascinated by the structure of the bridge and the initial problems it had which earned it the nickname 'the wibbly, wobbly bridge'. When pedestrians first started using it, the bridge suffered from unexpected vibrations going side to side which caused a slight sway. What the experts reasoned was that when we are faced with such a sway, our subconscious instinct is to time our footsteps to match the sway, so with everyone in effect marching in time, the sway was considerably exacerbated. They had to close it in order to make adaptations to eliminate the lateral sway.

On a previous visit to London, I had purchased a model kit of the Tower of London. I spent many a happy hour cutting out the card outlines, scoring, folding and gluing them and, on completion, I had a very decent model of the Tower. I then decided to make my own card model of the old London Bridge, a structure that served as the only crossing point into London for hundreds of years. It was sited just upstream from the present bridge and featured a series of arches with houses, shops, a water mill and even a chapel crowding on top. At the Southwark end was Nonsuch House, a large mansion, and here were placed the heads of traitors on spikes as a warning to others. The flow of water would be held up by the stone arches which was why for years the Thames would freeze in particularly cold weather. Then the water would cascade through the gaps making the work of the Thames boatmen particularly hazardous at times. My completed model was a joy to behold and after several years on display in our lounge, Sue suggested a more suitable location - the loft. Here it lasted several winters until the mice, who move in there in the colder weather, managed to do what the Great Fire hadn't achieved and utterly destroyed it. My next project was a model of the old St Paul's Cathedral with its tall spire, probably the third church to be erected on what is the highest point in the City of London. In medieval times, the cathedral was the largest public covered space in the city and as such attracted all manner of activities wholly unrelated to worshipping God. Londoners would go there to settle their debts and look for work. You can get some idea of the practices taking place there from an edict from Bishop Braybroke in the 15th century who banned the buying and selling of wares in the cathedral, the throwing of stones and shooting arrows at the pigeons and jackdaws nesting in the walls, and the playing at ball, a diversion which caused many broken windows. I'm not sure what happened to the completed model. I had few drawings to base it on so it lacked the detail of my London Bridge model. For someone a little obsessed with collecting things, I never collected models that you make yourself. I know some of my friends would have squadrons of Second World War aircraft hanging from their bedroom ceilings or shelves lined with famous steam engines or destroyer class battleships. I made the odd Airfix kit but I never had the patience to paint the individual parts. A quick lick of paint before applying the transfers was all they got. I remember making model cars with engine parts so complicated that I just stuck the bonnet down and threw away all the innards. My last model making occurred on our first holiday as a married couple. My parents had offered to take their caravan for us to spend a week in. We suggested Whitby or Scarborough so they chose an isolated pub midway between the two and abandoned us there. We had no car. There were very few buses. The beach was a three hour walk away. We were basically trapped in the field behind the pub for most of the day and so we took a trip into Scarborough and bought a number of Airfix historical models. The hours continued to pass slowly but at least we could lose ourselves in constructing models of Henry VIII or the Black Prince. One final note to this holiday - on the last day, as we waited for my parents to come and rescue us, we embarked upon a game of Scrabble Nearing the end of the game with the scores fairly tight, I realised I could put down all of my letters (50 points) whilst covering two triple word score squares (so multiplying my score by nine). As I began counting up what would be the highest single score I had ever achieved, more than both our current scores combined, Sue took the board and threw it at me. Apparently I become very smug when I'm winning. Who am I to disagree? 

Having ticked off the dome, the crypt and the main body of the cathedral, we left by the west exit onto the steps in front. Before us stood what the guidebooks described as a very poor statue of Queen Anne and the main road to Westminster, Ludgate Hill which then becomes Fleet Street, at that time the heart of the newspaper industry. The street is named after the River Fleet that long since disappeared underground along with most of the other tributaries of the Thames as it passes through the capital. Fleet Street's association with print media goes back to the first print house in Stationers Court, off Ludgate Circus and the later establishment of the Stationers Guild which was an association for writers and illustrators originally and later for printers. The St Paul's area, especially the churchyard to the rear around a medieval pulpit called St Paul's Cross was the place to buy books. The booksellers, carrying any number of heavy volumes, sought out permanent bases to stand and sell their books near St Paul's Cross. Originally the word stationer meant a book seller: it comes from the Latin word 'stationarius' meaning one who sells from a fixed station or shop and is the root of both the word stationery and stationary. There is a monument erected last century which commemorates St Paul's Cross and a plaque on the ground marking its original location. It was destroyed by the Puritans after the English Civil War - who else? - but it had been the scene of rousing sermons for about two hundred years. A Worcester cleric called Richard Walker pleaded guilty to sorcery here in around 1422, his punishment was to have to walk through the streets carrying two open books of magic which were then burnt and he was allowed to go free. Jane Shore' the mistress of Edward IV was brought here for a bit of public humiliation whilst four of the Gunpowder Plot conspirators were dragged here from Westminster and executed. A xenophobic speech here in 1517 brought about a thousand young male apprentices onto the streets where they went on the rampage, destroying anything associated with foreigners whilst a sermon by Bishop Bourne, the first in the reign of Catholic Mary I provoked a riot in which a dagger was thrown at the bishop, narrowly missing him and embedding itself in the columns of the pulpit.