The Towers & Steeples Designed by Sir Christopher Wren: A Descriptive, Historical & Critical Essay

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B. T. Batsford, 1881 - Spires - 47 pages
 

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Page 37 - I have made a design which will not be very expensive, but light, and still in the Gothic form, and of a style with the rest of the structure, which I would strictly adhere to throughout the whole intention. To deviate from the old form would be to run into a disagreeable mixture, which no person of a good taste could relish.
Page 37 - The original intention was plainly to have had a Steeple, the Beginnings of which appear on the corners of the Cross, but left off before it rose so high as the Ridge of the Roof...
Page 7 - ... different forms) may be of sufficient ornament to the town, without a great expense for enriching the outward walls of the churches, in which plainness and duration ought principally, if not wholly, to be studied. When a parish is divided, I suppose it may be thought sufficient, if the mother-church has a tower large enough for a good ring of bells, and the other churches smaller towers for two or three bells; because great towers, and lofty steeples, are sometimes more than half the charge of...
Page 7 - ... brought as forward as possible into the larger and more open streets, not in obscure lanes, nor where coaches will be much obstructed in the passage. Nor are we, I think, too nicely to observe east or west in the position, unless it falls out properly...
Page 8 - Very full directions and six drawings follow, explaining the plan and its details. ' I suppose,' he ends, ' you have good masons ; however, I would willingly take a farther pains to give all the mouldings in great ; we are scrupulous in small matters and you must pardon us, the architects are as great pedants as critics and heralds.
Page 11 - Models, such as I conceive may agree with the original scheme of the old architect, without any modern mixtures to show my own Inventions: in like manner as I have among the Parochial Churches of London given some few Examples (where I was obliged to deviate from a better style), which appear not ungraceful, but ornamental to the East part of the city...
Page 7 - ... handsome spires or lanterns, rising in good proportion above the neighbouring houses (of which I have given several examples in the City, of different forms), may be of sufficient ornament to the town...
Page 37 - Calceolus, which is a proper form to help workmen to ascend on the outside to amend any defects, without raising large scaffolds upon every slight occasion...
Page 5 - Italian gave me but a few Minutes view ; it was five little Designs in Paper, for which he hath received as many thousand Pistoles; I had only Time to copy it in my Fancy and Memory; I shall be able by Discourse, and a.
Page 4 - I could not be at, though invited, being taken up at All Souls, where we had music, voices, and theorbos, performed by some ingenious scholars. After dinner, I visited that miracle of a youth, Mr. Christopher Wren, nephew to the Bishop of Ely.

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