Drawing Wren's Churches

by Nick Richards

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St Augustine Watling Street

The second tower I drew was of another church was was destroyed in the Blitz right next to St Paul’s Cathedral. In the 1960s St Paul’s Choir School was built adjacent to it as can be seen in the drawing. This is one of my favourite of Wren’s spires and there is a pleasant place to sit in the gardens in front without fear of being approached by security people, though tourists were more of a hazard being so near to St Paul’s.

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Christchurch Greyfriars

This time I decided to draw two of Wren’s towers which remain standing, but without the rest of the church. The first was Christ Church Greyfriars in Newgate Street which was destroyed in the Blitz when a bomb hit the roof in December 1940. Two of the walls are still intact and the ruined interior is now a public garden, which can be glimpsed through the doorway on the left. 

An interesting encounter which happened while drawing was when I was spoken to by a Security guy who said he hoped I wasn’t going to draw the Merrill Lynch bank buildings which are next to the church, or “they’d have to ask questions” - which sounded vaguely threatening, although his manner wasn’t. I said not to worry, it wasn’t the type of architecture I was interested in!

This left me feeling rather sad though, the irony is the modern financial buildings are supposed to be invisible, you're not allowed to look at them, whereas in fact they are dominating the City of London and it’s the historic bits which are becoming invisible, squeezed into tiny gaps. The new ones going up are even co-opting the historic names of the sites they overshadow, such as “The Monument Building” and "The Wallbrook", so destroying what they pretend to preserve, so eventually only the names will be left.

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St James Garlickhythe

The biggest attraction for me of nearby St James Garlickhythe was the large ornate projecting clock with a figure on top, which I’ve made only slightly larger than in reality. The clock is a reconstruction of the original 1682 one destroyed in the Blitz. The figure on top is of course of St James, who is patron saint of Spain - the church is actually a stop on the pilgrim’s route to Santiago de Compostela! St James’s symbol is a scallop shell, and one can be seen in the pediment above the main door. The spire is by Nicholas Hawksmoor but isn’t really seen to good advantage in my drawing because of the very acute angle.

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St Mary Abchurch

St Mary Abchurch, just off Cannon St, has a small square called Abchurch Yard in front but is otherwise closely surrounded by buildings. I chose this end elevation to draw asa it’s a strong shape but it’s come out looking rather flat. It’s of red brick and has a tower with a leaded spire, and the building was supervised by Robert Hooke. While I was sketching, a group of people gathered in the yard but I didn’t have time to include them before they went inside. After I finished I pushed open the door and saw the fine interior with an amazing unexpected painted dome ceiling. The group of people had transformed into a choir rehearsing a motet, which sounded magical but I couldn’t linger as I had to move on to draw another church before it got dark.

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St Nicholas Cole Abbey

The final church I drew that day is certainly the only Wren church which is also home to a coffee shop, the appropriately named The Wren. Fuelled by their excellent coffee I set up to draw from an elevated position next to a bar named Yager. This being 5pm on a Friday city workers were gathering for a drink so I wanted to finish before things got too rowdy. I sketched in one of the many commuter cyclists heading home for the weekend, which needed to be a swift piece of brushwork!

The church is of course named after that Turkish saint who has become somewhat associated with Christmas. It was the first church of the fifty-one lost in the Great Fire to be rebuilt, although some medieval stonework remains in the west wall, as can be seen on the right-hand side in my picture. The spire is marvellously described on Wikipedia as being 'in the shape of an upside-down octagonal trumpet’. The three masted barque on the weather vane came from another Wren church, St Michael Queenhithe, which was demolished in 1876.

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St Benet Paul's Wharf

The second church I drew that day was again of brick, and is in a somewhat isolated position between Queen Victoria Street and the river. It receives few passers-by as is evidenced in my picture, although my drawing was accompanied by the shouts of boys in the adjacent City of London School. I was evidently sitting next to the part of that building housing the swimming pool by the sounds of shrieking and splashing.

I particularly admired the swags above the arched windows, the cupola and the elegant brickwork - striped? toothed? Must brush up on my architectural terminology. It's built in the style of a Dutch country church but now has regular services in Welsh!

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St Andrew by the Wardrobe

On my second visit to the City to draw more churches I approached from Blackfriars and the first I saw was the gloriously named St Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe, which sounds rather like it belongs in Narnia rather than Queen Victoria Street. There were two volunteer Church Watchers present from the excellent Friends of the City Churches charity. I learned how the church had been gutted in the Blitz with only the tower and walls surviving before being restored after the war.

It was particularly interesting to me also as being the first church I've drawn built of brick and not stone, allowing me to get a bit more adventurous with my watercolours! It's in an elevated position on St Andrew's Hill and its sloping garden has some quite lush foliage as you can see.

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Sketching Wren's London 020814 - Nick Richards and his sketch of St Edmund King and Martyr

Here's a link to a photo of me on the steps of St Paul's where we assembled at 4pm to share our work, taken by founder member of Urban Sketchers London, Katherine Tyrell.

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St Lawrence Jewry

The third and final church I drew that day was this one near the Guildhall. The weather vane is in the form of a gridiron, the instrument of St Lawrence's martyrdom - I didn't know that when I drew it, I just noticed it was an unusual shape! The modern glass building in the background is the Cheesegrater, which I couldn't resist including.

The mystery to me is why the spire is twisted slightly out of line with the tower, if you know why let me know!

My approach with these drawings, as with most of my artwork, is not being overly concerned with accurate, literal representation but more about having fun, using the building as inspiration and trying to discover its personality. And doing whatever I feel makes the image work, letting little accidents happen and keeping the lively, spontaneous feel. The fact I only work on the spot (I don't use photos and very rarely 'tidy up' or add anything later) helps me do this and adds to the authenticity, it's about capturing my experience of being there at a particular time.

Having said all that I'm still concerned with being true to the architecture and getting the details right, even if the elements might sometimes be not to scale or somewhat distorted!

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St Edmund King and Martyr

Next I spotted this attractive facade in Lombard Street and the choice for my next drawing was made. It's dedicated to the 9th century King of East Anglia of whom little is known, except that he was slain by the Vikings and buried at Bury St. Edmunds (sic)!

A fellow sketcher was also drawing the church and having trouble with perspective, regarding which he asked my advice. I replied that it's not something I consciously think about, which surprised him as did the fact that I don't sketch out first with pencil but use watercolour directly to discover the main shapes and then ink over the top. I find this makes me bolder and makes the final image more expressive and spontaneous, and hence the process is more exciting for me!

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St Magnus Martyr

The first church I tackled was visible from our meeting point and best known to me from the lines in TS Eliot’s 'The Wasteland': "Where the walls of Magnus Martyr hold Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold”.

Unfortunately with this being a Saturday and the church closed, that splendour remained unseen but the bells were pealing and I was very taken with the ornate clock dated 1709 which formerly told the time to travellers over Old London Bridge. Another point of interest is the flag of Orkney, the native land of the 12th century Magnus Erlendsson to whom the building is dedicated but the current design of which dates from 2007. Also seen is the sticker designed by Pete Scully for us to wear on the day, featuring a portrait of Wren himself.

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Sketching Wren's City Sketchcrawl

On the 2nd of August this year, Pete Scully of the London Urban Sketchers organised a sketchcrawl entitled Sketching Wren’s City. At just after 11 o’clock in the morning over 20 artists assembled at the Monument, designed by Sir Christopher Wren to commemorate the Great Fire of London. We were each provided with a copy of Pete’s excellent map of the 27 surviving city churches rebuilt by Wren.