The Monument was Hooke’s design as well: 202 ft tall but inside there was a zenith telescope, beneath which Hooke had built a basement laboratory. The two men worked at breakneck speed, meeting almost daily between 1666 and 1680, conferring in Jonathan’s or Garraways, their favourite coffee houses. Yet nothing that Cooper has put forward can or should alter specialists' understanding that Wren designed the Monument. However - suffice it to say - that I do now believe Robert Hooke is emerging from the shadows. One of the most glaring and peculiar lacunae in Cooper's discussion of the Monument is the absent acknowledgment that the work of art is extensively inscribed in Latin, following well-established ancient and contemporary Continental (and, for that matter, English) patterns for monumental public art. Whether one or another of these buildings is still extant is not something Cooper unfailingly tells us (and he should have), but even in the case of buildings that no longer stand, we do not learn if surviving plans, sections, elevations, painted views, photographs or written documents might prove helpful tools for reconstructing lost entities. She researched his life when writing the solo play Hanging Hooke, opening 1 March at the St James Theatre. 25% – the proportion of London’s citizens who never returned after the fire, according to a census taken seven years later, in 1673. Startlingly detailed, large-scale engravings recording Hooke's small-scale observations illustrate his landmark book Micrographia, published in 1665, the same year that he became professor of geometry at London's Gresham College, which was also his residence. Be that as it may, the absent siting of St Paul's neither supports nor discounts the shadowy existence of Hooke's lost and therefore unknowable original. This Act regulated the … Finally, the east dado efficiently provides a brief building history located within actual elapsed time through the device of naming (in the ablative absolute) the seven lord mayors of London under whose respective one-year terms the column was built. As my old History Tutor used to say: given Time, the Truth will always out! Cooper demonstrates that ‘95 percent of the foundations had been staked out by the end of 1671’; that nearly 22 percent of those measurements can be ascribed directly to Hooke; that Hooke in fact completed nearly 36 percent of all measurements; that his activity, occupying ‘at least three hours a day’ in the years between 1667 and 1673, proved extremely lucrative; and that Hooke's survey books, unlike those of Mills and Jerman, are lost, having remained in his personal possession because over time he recorded other information in them related to various of his interests (pp. Members visit Cutty Sark and Royal Observatory for free.Looking to buy... David Fathers presents a unique and richly illustrated guide to the London... Peppa and George are going on a very special day out to London! She researched his life when writing the solo play Hanging Hooke, opening 1 March at the St James Theatre. Written records demonstrate that Hooke made numerous and painstaking measurements, wrote reports, gave testimony and visited building sites, yet those same records unfortunately give historians no legitimate occasion to infer that the activities performed, taken singly or as a unit, should be equated with design responsibilities. Moreover original drawings of St Benet Paul’s Wharf and St Edmunds the King indicate that these are strong contenders as well. Reviews in History is part of the School of Advanced Study. According to Corporation records, he showed sensitivity and scrupulous judgment and yet Newton’s description “strange unsociable temper” still shadows his legacy. A particularly fascinating chapter treats of London's Fleet River. She researched his life when writing the solo play Hanging Hooke, opening 1 March at the St James Theatre. The Rebuilding of London Act 1666 is an Act of the Parliament of England (19 Car. It took about 50 years to rebuild the ravaged section of London.Saint Paul’s Cathedral was one of the churches that were destroyed, and it … The narrow streets that had helped the fire spread are here replaced by wide avenues. Fate spared Pepys to write his vivid account and placed Hooke in the centre of the clean up operations for amidst the devastation, Gresham College became the temporary home for the Corporation of London and City businesses and by Spring 1667, Hooke was appointed Surveyor for the City of London. On the latter date, the Court of Aldermen convened a committee made up of Wren, Hooke and Dr Thomas Gale (then the master of St Paul's School, formerly Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge) to compose another Latin inscription, namely the three independent inscriptions visible today and located on the north, east, and south faces of the dado. It was a Herculean task for the Hooke - Wren partnership. Mr. T. F. Reddaway, in The Rebuilding of London (1940), undertakes a study of the whole subject from the slacken ing of the Fire to the efforts of the City Corporation in the sixteen seventies and eighties to lure the scattered population back to the rebuilt houses. Rebuilding London after the Great Fire was a long process. Though the Great Fire happened over 350 years ago, there are many aspects of its … Design for rebuilding London after the Fire of London by John Evelyn Evelyn's unrealised designs planned to replace London's narrow streeets with a grid-like system. The primary usefulness of Cooper's well-organised study is the reconstruction of Hooke's activities as a surveyor in post-fire London, although their exposition is at times drawn out longer than perhaps strictly necessary. Journal DOI: 10.14296/RiH/issn.1749.8155 | Cookies | Privacy | Contact Us. By subscribing to this mailing list you will be subject to the School of Advanced Study privacy policy. About the author. 300,000 – the number of people living in London (the City and outlying suburbs) at the time of the Great Fire. When Wren Rebuilt London In September 1666, the Great Fire of London destroyed 13,200 houses, 87 churches, St. Paul's Cathedral, and most of London's official buildings. My speciality being the history of art, I shall not comment further on either the more explicitly scientific side of Hooke's career or Cooper's recounting of it. Interested in reviewing for us? Robert Hooke (1635–1703) is a pivotal figure in the intellectual life of seventeenth-century Europe. On Sunday 2nd September, 1666 at 3am, Jane Birch woke Mr and Mrs Pepys in alarm: the flames were already up to All Hallows, a quarter of a mile from their home in Seething Lane.. Hooke records in his diary that on 11 September 1675, he ‘[r]eceived the Draught of [the] Urne’ from Wren, a drawing of the very urn that (with some changes) is to be seen at the summit today. Robert Hooke and the rebuilding of London after the Great Fire Siobhán Nicholas explores Hooke's role in rebuilding London after the Great Fire. According to Cooper, Hooke ‘applied himself diligently to learning Latin and Greek [but] was no more than competent in those subjects’ (p. 16). The discussion of Cibber's relief includes one error, for there is no representation of Victory there; instead, a standing male figure behind Charles II, traditionally identified as his brother, James, duke of York (later James II), holds in his left hand a laurel-leaf crown, which is an emblem of victory. We all know about the Great Fire but do we know what followed? Headings under ‘Hooke, Robert’ in the detailed index would lead readers to infer that he did not travel widely (or at all), so how did he learn about architecture? Cooper bases his claim for Hooke's authorship on a document dated 26 January 1671, in which the London Court of Aldermen ‘view[ed] the draught now produced by Mr Hooke one of the Surveyors,’ a draught that ‘was well Liked and approved’ (p. 200). John E. Moore, 'The Monument, or, Christopher Wren's Roman accent'. And if Hooke had designed the column, one wonders, why would he not have been solicited to design its summit? A historic church rebuilt after the Great Fire of 1666 by Sir Christopher Wren in the City of London. Siobhán Nicholas explores Hooke's role in rebuilding London after the Great Fire. In the study to hand, Michael Cooper intends to ‘rectify some of the neglect and misunderstandings about Hooke by examining his work in London as City Surveyor after the Great Fire and relating this to his work in science’ (p. 2). These cost overruns and the impressive rebuilding of the City Churches brought it to pass that plans for a quay stretching eastward to London Bridge were realised only in part, which no doubt disappointed Christopher Wren, John Evelyn and others who had commented on the chaotic and undignified visual aspect of the north bank of the Thames, and whose plans for rebuilding included a broad quay there. In 2006, when I began researching Hanging Hooke, I of course visited all these familiar sites, hungry to learn more about our London’s Leonardo. (1) Cooper's text, footnotes and bibliography do not indicate that he consulted this documentation. (2) Now it is certainly possible that Wren may have ‘shewed his Majestie’ drawings made by someone else, but his extensive written account of the various projects lend support to the assumption that he invented and drew them himself. Cooper provides a brief description of the west dado of the Monument, which consists of a relief carved by Caius Gabriel Cibber; that relief is illustrated not by a photograph of the work of art we see today, but by a small-scale reproduction of an unidentified engraving (p. 202, ill. 68).