The Birth And Survival OF St. Paul's Cathedral

On 21 June 1675, a foundation stone was quietly laid in the heart of London, an unassuming act that would, over centuries, come to symbolise the resilience of a city and the endurance of its people. This was the first physical step in the rebuilding of St Paul’s Cathedral, the magnificent Baroque structure that today remains one of Britain’s most recognisable landmarks.

Yet this was not London’s first cathedral dedicated to St Paul. In fact, it was the fifth to occupy Ludgate Hill, a site steeped in ecclesiastical history dating back to at least 604 AD. Its immediate predecessor, an enormous Gothic edifice known as Old St Paul’s, had stood for over 400 years before it fell victim to the inferno that consumed four-fifths of the City during the Great Fire of London in September 1666.

Amid the charred ruins and uncertainty that followed the fire, a young architect by the name of Christopher Wren was tasked with envisioning a new spiritual and civic heart for London. At just 34 years old, Wren had the daunting responsibility of reimagining a sacred site whose previous incarnation had been a towering symbol of medieval London. His design would not just replace a building but would help shape the identity of a recovering metropolis.

Old St Paul’s Cathedral in London from Early Christian Architecture by Francis Bond, 1913.

A Monument to National Memory

St Paul’s, completed in 1710 after 35 years of meticulous construction, quickly took its place as a stage for British national life. Beneath its majestic dome, inspired in part by St Peter’s Basilica in Rome, generations have gathered to mourn, to celebrate, and to mark moments that shaped Britain’s sense of itself.

Within its crypt lie some of the nation’s most revered figures. Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson, victor at Trafalgar, and the Duke of Wellington, who defeated Napoleon at Waterloo, rest here as symbols of imperial might and sacrifice. Centuries later, the funerals of statesmen like Sir Winston Churchill in 1965 and Baroness Margaret Thatcher in 2013 reaffirmed the cathedral’s role as Britain’s grandest place of farewell.

Royal milestones, too, have been marked beneath its dome: Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee in 1897, King George V’s silver jubilee in 1935, and Queen Elizabeth II’s diamond jubilee in 2012 all brought the monarchy and people together within its walls. When Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer at St Paul’s in 1981, an estimated 750 million people worldwide tuned in, proof that the cathedral remains, even today, a living witness to national spectacle and sentiment.

Herbert Mason, photographed in 1954. He took the iconic photo of St Paul's at the top of this article

The Cathedral That Refused to Fall

St Paul’s Cathedral faced its greatest test not from centuries of storms or the original Great Fire, but from the bombs and chaos of the Second World War. During the Blitz, when German bombers made London their nightly target, this old church turned into something more than stone and mortar, it became a symbol of the city’s determination to carry on, no matter what fell from the sky.

The Blitz, stretching from late 1940 into 1941, brought wave after wave of air raids that flattened streets, turned neighbourhoods into rubble, and forced families to sleep in Tube stations for months on end. Through it all, the familiar dome of St Paul’s rose above the smoke and ruin, offering Londoners a glimpse of something that Hitler’s bombs hadn’t managed to destroy, yet.

One night in particular sticks in the city’s memory: 29 December 1940, the night Londoners came to call the Second Great Fire of London. That evening, German bombers dropped about 100,000 incendiary bombs on the old City, turning whole blocks into a giant firestorm. The heat was so intense that iron structures bent, glass melted in the streets and the flames glowed so brightly they could be seen from the French coast.

Right at the heart of this fiery chaos stood St Paul’s. Prime Minister Winston Churchill knew exactly how much the cathedral meant to the nation’s morale. He famously insisted it must be saved at all costs, ordering firefighters to do everything they could to keep the flames from claiming the dome. That night alone, some 29 incendiaries landed on or near the building.

Members of the St Paul's Watch on duty during the Second World War.

But here’s where fact beats the popular myth: many people still believe St Paul’s came through the Blitz without so much as a scratch. In reality, the cathedral took two heavy hits from high-explosive bombs. The first bomb exploded at the East End on 10 October 1940, lifting the Quire roof clean off from end to end. The blast brought down huge chunks of masonry and destroyed the altar table below. Godfrey Allen, who was Surveyor to the Fabric at the time, said the roof timbers looked like a battleship after battle, while the lead covering had “billowed like waves of the sea”.

The High Altar at the East End of the Cathedral damaged by a high explosive, 10th October 1940

The second direct hit came later, on 16 April 1941, landing over the North Transept. This bomb was even more dramatic. It crashed through the roof and exploded in mid-air inside the cathedral, shaking the massive Dome itself and pushing out the south wall of the South Transept. Every single window shattered. The falling masonry smashed through the vault, leaving a gaping hole in the Cathedral floor, people could look straight down into the Crypt below.

Damage to the Cathedral Floor caused by the high explosive, which struck the North Transept on 16 April 1941

A member of the St Paul’s Watch, A.S.G. Butler, described the chaos the next morning in words that bring it all to life:

“Well, we copped it last night… I’ve got worms in my head with all the noise, and my legs won’t quite walk… Up in the dome area, we felt the shock of it nicely. St Paul’s rocked. But only for an instant; then, quivering, settled down in its habitual majesty.”

Despite the damage, the volunteer Watch, a band of dedicated men and women who patrolled the cathedral roof night after night, didn’t just save the building during raids; they also helped restore it. When repairs finally began, it was slow going. The Watch themselves funded the first big repair: replacing the keystone of the damaged arch over the High Altar. In 1942, they proudly gathered on the altar steps to hand their cheque for £50 to the Dean and admire the new stone. In their words,

“This is the stone that has stirred the imagination of some past and present members of the Watch — Architects, Builders, Surveyors and others deeply interested in the Cathedral, who all have a very special and intimate knowledge of the Cathedral’s structure, and a profound veneration of the genius of Wren.”

In the end, their courage paid off. The famous photograph of St Paul’s dome shining above a burning city — calm, steady and somehow untouched — gave Londoners (and the rest of the world) proof that London itself would survive whatever the Nazis threw at it.

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