Wren [antikvár]

CHAPTER ONE Early years Sir Christopher Wren made himself into a great architect. He had no formal training and little opportunity of knowing, at first-hand, the architecture of the Continent of his own or any other age. He built nothing before he was thirty; but by the time he was seventy and still very active, he could rival any European architect then living. He was presented with remarkable opportunities, for he was called upon to design a great number of buildings widely differing in size and intention; and by a process of trial and error, and above all of retrial, he learnt from his opportunities until he became a master of his art. One of his outstanding characteristics throughout his life was indeed his willingness to produce a scheme, to abandon it if it proved impractical, and to go on working on a problem, often even during execution, until something both satisfactory and possible had been achieved. His work cannot, in fact, be fully appreciated without some reference to discarded schemes, for it is here that the striking flexibility of his mind is best displayed. It enabled him to achieve a great range of buildings, some less magnificent than he might have wished, but supremely well suited to their purpose and to the circumstances which controlled their execution. Christopher Wren was born in 1632, in the most tranquil years of the reign of Charles I. His family had close contact with the court, for though at the time of his birth his father was Rector of East Knoyle, Wiltshire, he was very soon to succeed his brother Matthew as Dean of Windsor and Registrar of the Order of the Garter. Both brothers, Royalist and High Church, were to suffer for their opinions during the Civil War. The Dean's house was twice sacked, and he had to flee, first to the West Country and then to his son-in-law, William Holder, at