.jpg)
Read aloud by your device's voice. It sounds different on each device.
The first
The first church for St Paul dates to AD 604
Bede records that in AD 604 Augustine of Canterbury consecrated Mellitus as the first bishop of the East Saxons. King Æthelberht of Kent built a church to St Paul as his seat. It is assumed, though not proved, that it stood on the same site as today's cathedral.
Old St Paul's
Its predecessor was longer, with a spire of about 489 feet
Old St Paul's was 585 feet long, and its spire was about 489 feet high. Its Gothic ribbed vault was built of wood rather than stone, which affected the building's fate. The Great Fire of London in September 1666 gutted it.
The new one
A new cathedral, paid for by a tax on coal
Christopher Wren was given the design on 30 July 1669 and planned a dome. The building was paid for by a tax on coal and finished within his lifetime. The dome is 365 feet high, and was the tallest building in London from 1710 to 1963.
365 ftthe height of the dome, London's tallest building from 1710 to 1963
“Handsome and noble to all the ends of it and to the reputation of the City and the nation”
Dean William Sancroft, writing to Wren in 1668
The Blitz
A bomb that did not go off, and a dome that stayed up
On 12 September 1940 a time-delayed bomb that had struck the cathedral was defused by Royal Engineers under Temporary Lieutenant Robert Davies. Had it exploded, it would have totally destroyed the cathedral. Davies and Sapper George Cameron Wylie were each awarded the George Cross.
Day 2, midday
It comes after British Museum. Then Tower of London.
More stories from this trip idea
The words are a retelling of the Wikipedia article St Paul's Cathedral, and are shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. They are checked against those articles, and a fact that is not in them is left out.