London - Edward Rutherfurd [423]
“Today”, announced Sir Christopher Wren, “we begin a rebirth.”
The rebirth of London was already a remarkable feat. The city that was rising out of the ashes might, certainly, have been grander. Wren and others had submitted plans for a splendid series of noble squares, circuses and avenues that would have been the wonder of the northern world. But the huge difficulty of compensating the thousands of people who had property rights along the existing street lines, the fact that the need to commence work was urgent, and the sheer expense of such grandeur had forced the king and his government to take a more modest course. The layout of the new city was a modified version of the old medieval plan.
But there all resemblance ended. For now, with seven centuries of huddled, overhanging wooden buildings burned to ashes, there was a chance to avoid the mistakes of the past, and the government took it. Regulations were drawn up; streets were to be wider; some of the gradients of the hills were smoothed; houses were to be built in handsome terraces, in a simple classical style, according to precise and uniform dimensions – two storeys plus a cellar and garret in side streets, three or four storeys for the main streets. And above all, strictly enforced this time, they were of brick or stone with slate or tile roofs. When one or two merchants tried to break the rules, their houses were promptly pulled down.
Now, all around London, were brickfields, where men dug up and baked the London clay and the rich brickearth that a tropical sea and, later, Ice Age winds had deposited so generously millions of years before.
A few medieval landmarks remained. The Tower still stood sentinel by the waterside. Inside the eastern wall, a Gothic church or two survived; out at Smithfield, St Bartholomew’s kept its quiet peace from the days of the crusades. And on the river itself, one curiosity was retained: the tall old houses on London Bridge, which, though scorched, had mostly come through the fire, were left standing and were to remain, as a charming relic of London’s medieval glory, of the days of Chaucer and the Black Prince, for another ninety years.
But the medieval city was gone: and in its place was arising something not unlike the Roman city that had been there once before. True, there was no amphitheatre looming over the western hill: the Guildhall occupied that site and men’s love of bloodshed had to be contented with public executions and cock-fights instead of gladiatorial conquests. True, it would be another two centuries until central heating was rediscovered, seventeenth-century roads would have made any Roman laugh, and literacy was almost certainly less widespread than in the ancient world; but despite these drawbacks, it could still be said that the new city had nearly returned to the standards of civilization enjoyed by the inhabitants of Londonium fourteen hundred years before.
Of all the builders of the new city, none was greater than Sir Christopher Wren. The astronomer turned architect was everywhere. Already he had rebuilt St Mary-le-Bow with a magnificent tower and classical steeple. As a charming and witty addition, he had put a little balcony in the tower overlooking Cheapside as a reminder of the old grandstand where once kings and courtiers had watched the jousts. St Bride’s in Fleet Street was going up, and numerous other projects were already in hand. But nothing compared with the vast undertaking before them now.
St Paul’s. Huge, almost roofless, cavernous: its high, blackened walls had stood for some years after the fire. Since gunpowder was too dangerous, Wren had ordered them slowly pounded with a battering-ram and section by section, they crumbled and fell. Except for the west wall, they were only a few feet high now. And in place of the tall old Gothic church Wren had designed a magnificent new edifice that would be the glory of London.
And all the assembled craftsmen