HClaireB

By HClaireB

Paul's Cross...

...dedicated this day in 1910. The original Paul's Cross in the churchyard of St Paul's Cathedral was a pulpit, built as an outdoor preaching site, as part of the medieval Old St Paul's Cathedral. The pulpit fell down in the 1640s when Old St Paul's was itself in a sorry state, 20 odd years before it burned down in the Great Fire of London. Wren rebuilt the cathedral but not the pulpit. This had to wait until the "Wrenaissance" of the early 20th century, driven by the Anglo-Catholics. There was a heated debate about the form it should take and the result is a typically British compromise - not a rebuilding but a monument to the original pulpit, and not an actual cross except for the one being held aloft by St Paul.

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