St Paul's Cathedral, formally the Cathedral Church of St Paul in London, is an Anglican cathedral in London, England, the seat of the Bishop of London. The cathedral serves as the mother church of the Diocese of London in the Church of England. It is on Ludgate Hill at the highest point of the City of London. Its dedication in honour of Paul the Apostle dates back to the original cathedral church on this site, founded in AD 604. The high-domed present structure, which was completed in 1710, is a Grade I listed building that was designed in the English Baroque style by Sir Christopher Wren. The cathedral's reconstruction was part of a major rebuilding programme initiated in the aftermath of the Great Fire of London. The earlier Gothic cathedral (Old St Paul's Cathedral), largely destroyed in the Great Fire, was a central focus for medieval and early modern London, including Paul's walk and St Paul's Churchyard, being the site of St Paul's Cross.
The cathedral is one of the most famous and recognisable sights of London. Its dome, surrounded by the spires of Wren's City churches, has dominated the skyline for more than 300 years. At 365 ft (111 m) high, it was the tallest building in London from 1710 to 1963. The dome is still one of the highest in the world. St Paul's is the second-largest church building in area in the United Kingdom, after Liverpool Cathedral.
Services held in the building finished in 1710 have included the funerals of Admiral Lord Nelson, the Duke of Wellington, Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher; a royal thanksgiving service for the union of Great Britain; an inauguration service for the Metropolitan Hospital Sunday Fund; peace services marking the end of the First and Second World Wars; the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer; and the launch of the Festival of Britain. The cathedral held thanksgiving services after royal processions in the jubilees of their reigns for monarchs, George III, Victoria, George V, and Elizabeth II, and for Elizabeth's 80th and 90th birthdays. St Paul's Cathedral is the central subject of much promotional material, as well as of images of the dome surrounded by the smoke and fire of the Blitz.
The cathedral is a working church with hourly prayer and daily services. The tourist entry fee at the door is £25 for adults (January 2024) but no charges are made to worshippers attending services, or for private prayer.
The nearest London Underground station is St Paul's, which is 130 yards (120 m) away from St Paul's Cathedral.
History
Before the cathedral
The location of Londinium's original cathedral is unknown, but legend and medieval tradition claim it was St Peter upon Cornhill. St Paul is an unusual attribution for a cathedral and suggests there was another one in the Roman period. Legends of St Lucius link St Peter upon Cornhill as the centre of the Roman Londinium Christian community. It stands upon the highest point in the area of old Londinium, and it was given pre-eminence in medieval procession on account of the legends. There is, however, no other reliable evidence, and the location of the site on the Forum makes it difficult for it to fit the legendary stories. In 1995, a large fifth-century building on Tower Hill was excavated and has been claimed as a Roman basilica, possibly a cathedral, although this is speculative.
The Elizabethan antiquarian William Camden argued that a temple to the goddess Diana had stood during Roman times on the site occupied by the medieval St Paul's Cathedral. Wren reported that he had found no trace of any such temple during the works to build the new cathedral after the Great Fire, and Camden's hypothesis is no longer accepted by modern archaeologists.
Pre-Norman cathedral
There is evidence for Christianity in London during the Roman period, but no firm evidence for the location of churches or a cathedral. Bishop Restitutus is said to have represented London at the Council of Arles in 314 AD. A list of the 16 "archbishops" of London was recorded by Jocelyn of Furness in the 12th century, claiming London's Christian community was founded in the second century under the legendary King Lucius and his missionary saints Fagan, Deruvian, Elvanus and Medwin. None of that is considered credible by modern historians but, although the surviving text is problematic, either Bishop Restitutus or Adelphius at the 314 Council of Arles seems to have come from Londinium.
Bede records that in AD 604 Augustine of Canterbury consecrated Mellitus as the first bishop to the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the East Saxons and their king, Sæberht. Sæberht's uncle and overlord, Æthelberht, king of Kent, built a church dedicated to St Paul in London, as the seat of the new bishop. It is assumed, although not proved, that this first Anglo-Saxon cathedral stood on the same site as the later medieval and the present cathedrals.
On the death of Sæberht in about 616, his pagan sons expelled Mellitus from London, and the East Saxons reverted to paganism. The fate of the first cathedral building is unknown. Christianity was restored among the East Saxons in the late seventh century and it is presumed that either the Anglo-Saxon cathedral was restored or a new building erected as the seat of bishops such as Cedd, Wine and Erkenwald, the last of whom was buried in the cathedral in 693.
Earconwald was consecrated the bishop of London in 675, and is said to have bestowed great cost on the fabric, and in later times he almost occupied the place of traditionary, founder: the veneration paid to him is second only to that which was rendered to St. Paul. Erkenwald would become a subject of the important High Medieval poem St Erkenwald.
King Æthelred the Unready was buried in the cathedral on his death in 1016; the tomb is now lost. The cathedral was burnt with much of the city, in a fire in 1087, as recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
Old St Paul's
The fourth St Paul's, generally referred to as Old St Paul's, was begun by the Normans after the 1087 fire. A further fire in 1135 disrupted the work, and the new cathedral was not consecrated until 1240. During the period of construction, the style of architecture had changed from Romanesque to Gothic, and this was reflected in the pointed arches and larger windows of the upper parts and East End of the building. The Gothic ribbed vault was constructed, like that of York Minster, of wood rather than stone, which affected the ultimate fate of the building.
An enlargement programme commenced in 1256. This "New Work" was consecrated in 1300 but was not complete until 1314. During the later Medieval period, St Paul's was exceeded in length only by the Abbey Church of Cluny and in the height of its spire only by Lincoln Cathedral and St. Mary's Church, Stralsund. Excavations by Francis Penrose in 1878 showed that it was 585 feet (178 m) long and 100 feet (30 m) wide (290 feet (88 m) across the transepts and crossing). The spire was about 489 feet (149 m) in height. By the 16th century, the building was deteriorating.
The English Reformation under Henry VIII and Edward VI (accelerated by the Chantries Acts) led to the destruction of elements of the interior ornamentation and the chapels, shrines, and chantries. The Reformation would come to include the removal of the cathedral's collection of relics, which by the sixteenth century was understood to include:
the body of St Erkenwald
both arms of St Mellitus
a knife thought to belong to Jesus
hair of Mary Magdalene
blood of St Paul
milk of the Virgin Mary
the head of St John
the skull of Thomas Becket
the head and jaw of King Ethelbert
part of the wood of the cross,
a stone of the Holy Sepulchre,
a stone from the spot of the Ascension, and
some bones of the eleven thousand virgins of Cologne.
In October 1538, an image of St Erkenwald, probably from the shrine, was delivered to the master of the king's jewels. Other images may have survived, at least for a time. More systematic iconoclasm happened in the reign of Edward VI: the Grey Friar's Chronicle reports that the rood and other images were destroyed in November 1547; during this activity, a workman died when items fell on him.
In late 1549, at the height of the iconoclasm of the English Reformation, Sir Rowland Hill altered the route of his Lord Mayor's Day procession and said a de profundis at the tomb of Erkenwald. Later in Hill's mayoralty of (1550) the high altar of St Paul's was removed overnight to be destroyed, an occurrence that provoked a fight in which a man was killed. Hill had ordered, unusually for the time, that St Barnabas's Day would not be kept as a public holiday ahead of these events. Emerging research and physical discoveries at Hill’s Shropshire estate, Soulton Hall, suggest that these events provided cover for the secret relocation of the cathedral's most sacred relics. It is now understood that the "destroyed" high altar stone and the remains of Saint Erkenwald may have been clandestinely transported to Soulton, where Hill constructed a "coded" sanctuary to house them. This is supported by the discovery of a massive stone slab at Soulton matching the dimensions of the lost altar and a basement "Aedicule" whose double-cube geometry replicates the proportions of Erkenwald's original London shrine.
Three years later, by October 1553, "Alle the alteres and chappelles in alle Powlles churche" were taken down. In August 1553, the dean and chapter were cited to appear before Queen Mary's commissioners.
Some of the buildings in the St Paul's churchyard were sold as shops and rental properties, especially to printers and booksellers. In 1561, the spire was destroyed by a lightning strike, an event that Roman Catholic writers claimed was a sign of God's judgment on England's Protestant rulers. Bishop James Pilkington preached a sermon in response, claiming that the lightning strike was a judgement for the irreverent use of the cathedral building. Immediate steps were taken to repair the damage, with the citizens of London and the clergy offering money to support the rebuilding. However, the cost of repairing the building properly was too great for a country and city recovering from a trade depression. Instead, the roof was repaired, and a timber "roo" was put on the steeple.
In 1631, a new west portico was commissioned from England's first classical architect, Inigo Jones. Work on this and other renovations was still incomplete at the start of the English Civil War in 1642. In 1643, Parliament, dominated by Puritans, voted to use the deanery house as a prison and control of the cathedral passed to the City of London Corporation, who assisted Parliament's commissioners in removing images and statuary that they deemed idolatrous, while regalia and ornaments were sold. The scaffolding still in place for the restoration work was also sold, and the subscriptions and bequests put aside for it were appropriated for the military. The nave was used as a cavalry barracks for a time and general neglect followed. By 1658, the south transept had collapsed and parts of the roof were missing. For centuries, crowds had been drawn to St Paul's Cross in the northeast corner of the churchyard to hear open-air preaching, but Parliament ordered it to be demolished in 1642.
Following the Stuart Restoration, King Charles II established a royal commission in 1663 to restore or replace the ruinous cathedral; funds were raised and some £3,600 was spent in restoration, although a great deal remained to be done. One of the commissioners was Christopher Wren, who submitted proposals in May 1666 for a more radical renovation in the Classical style, rather than the "Gothick Rudeness of the old design". However, the Great Fire of London in September 1666 gutted Old St Paul's. While it might have been possible to reconstruct it, a decision was taken to build a new cathedral in a modern style.
St Paul's Theatre
The St Paul's Theatre (1575–1606) was converted by Sebastian Westcott, the cathedral's organist, from the Almoner's Hall of the cathedral. The genesis and layout was similar to Blackfriars Theatre, but smaller. Music for organ was specified in a number of plays. The works were staged at the private St Paul's Theatre by the choristers of the St Paul's Cathedral. A boy company performed plays, without any involvement of adult actors. The boy actors at St Paul's were primarily choristers, playing to paying audiences.The boy companies were viewed as respectable, but played less frequently than the adult companies, and had little crowd trouble. The boy choristers of St Paul's Cathedral used the Almoner's Hall from 1575 until 1584.
Present St Paul's
The task of designing a replacement structure was officially assigned to Sir Christopher Wren on 30 July 1669. He had previously been put in charge of the rebuilding of churches to replace those lost in the Great Fire. More than 50 city churches are attributable to Wren. Concurrent with designing St Paul's, Wren was engaged in the production of his five Tracts on Architecture.
Wren had begun advising on the repair of the Old St Paul's' in 1661, five years before the fire in 1666. The proposed work included renovations to the interior and exterior to complement the classical facade designed by Inigo Jones in 1630. Wren planned to replace the dilapidated tower with a dome, using the existing structure as a scaffold. He produced a drawing of the proposed dome, which shows his idea that it should span the nave and aisles at the crossing. After the Fire, it was at first thought possible to retain a substantial part of the old cathedral, but ultimately the entire structure was demolished in the early 1670s.
In July 1668, Dean William Sancroft wrote to Wren that he was charged by the Archbishop of Canterbury, in agreement with the bishops of London and Oxford, to design a new cathedral that was "Handsome and noble to all the ends of it and to the reputation of the City and the nation." The design process took several years, but a design was finally settled and attached to a royal warrant, with the proviso that Wren was permitted to make any further changes that he deemed necessary. The result was the present St Paul's Cathedral, still the second largest church in Britain, with a dome proclaimed as the finest in the world. The building was financed by a tax on coal and was completed within its architect's lifetime, with many of the major contractors engaged for the duration.
The "topping out" of the cathedral (when the final stone was placed on the lantern) took place on 26 October 1708, performed by Wren's son Christopher Jr and the son of one of the masons. The cathedral was declared officially complete by Parliament on 25 December 1711 (Christmas Day). In fact, construction continued for several years after that, with the statues on the roof added in the 1720s. In 1716 the total costs amounted to £1,095,556 (£195 million in 2025).
Consecration
On 2 December 1697, 31 years and 3 months after the Great Fire destroyed Old St Paul's, the new cathedral was consecrated for use. The Right Reverend Henry Compton, Bishop of London, preached the sermon. It was based on the text of Psalm 122, "I was glad when they said unto me: Let us go into the house of the Lord." The first regular service was held on the following Sunday.
Opinions of Wren's cathedral differed, with some loving it: "Without, within, below, above, the eye / Is filled with unrestrained delight", while others hated it: "There was an air of Popery about the gilded capitals, the heavy arches ... They were unfamiliar, un-English ...".
Since 1900
Suffragette terror attacks
St Paul's was the target of two suffragette bombing attacks in 1913 and 1914 respectively. This was as part of the suffragette bombing and arson campaign from 1912 and 1914 in which suffragettes from the Women's Social and Political Union, as part of their campaign for women's suffrage, carried out a series of politically motivated bombings and arson nationwide. Churches were explicitly targeted by the suffragettes as they believed the Church of England was complicit in reinforcing opposition to women's suffrage. Between 1913 and 1914, 32 churches across Britain were attacked.
The first attack on St Paul's occurred on 8 May 1913, at the start of a sermon. A bomb was heard ticking and discovered as people were entering the cathedral. It was made out of potassium nitrate. Had it exploded, the bomb likely would have destroyed the historic bishop's throne and other parts of the cathedral. The remains of the device, which was made partly out of a mustard tin, are now on display at the City of London Police Museum.
A second bombing of the cathedral by the suffragettes was attempted on 13 June 1914, but the bomb was again discovered before it could explode. This attempted bombing occurred two days after a bomb had exploded at Westminster Abbey, which damaged the Coronation Chair and caused a mass panic for the exits. Several other churches were bombed at this time, such as St Martin-in-the-Fields church in Trafalgar Square and the Metropolitan Tabernacle.
Great Restoration
Early in the 20th century, concerns were raised about the effects of settlement on the dome and the piers supporting it, confirmed by surveyors' reports in 1913 and 1914. An appeal for £70,000 allowed two of the piers to be reinforced, despite delays caused by the First World War. A second appeal for £100,000 in 1922 allowed the work to continue, but on Christmas Eve 1924, a Dangerous Structures Notice was served on the cathedral by the City Corporation. Starting in March 1925, concrete and more than 250 steel bars were inserted into the piers, while a great steel chain was embedded around the outside of the dome to stabilise it. The high altar was moved to the nave, and the organ was rebuilt in the north aisle so that worship could continue while work went on behind a screen. When the work was finally completed, a grand rededication service was held on 25 June 1930; it was attended by King George V and Queen Mary and featured a procession of the 220 men who had worked on the restoration. The service was broadcast on BBC Radio, the first time that worship had been broadcast from the cathedral, as it had previously been opposed by the Dean and Chapter.
War damage
The cathedral survived the Blitz although it was struck by bombs on 10 October 1940 and 17 April 1941. The first strike destroyed the high altar, while the second strike on the north transept left a hole in the floor above the crypt. The latter bomb is believed to have detonated in the upper interior above the north transept, and the force was sufficient to shift the entire dome laterally by a small amount.
On 12 September 1940, a time-delayed bomb that had struck the cathedral was successfully defused and removed by a bomb disposal detachment of Royal Engineers under the command of Temporary Lieutenant Robert Davies. Had this bomb detonated, it would have totally destroyed the cathedral; it left a 100-foot (30 m) crater when later remotely detonated in a secure location. As a result of this action, Davies and Sapper George Cameron Wylie were each awarded the George Cross. Davies' George Cross and other medals are on display at the Imperial War Museum, London.
One of the best known images of London during the war was a photograph of St Paul's taken on 29 December 1940 during the "Second Great Fire of London" by photographer Herbert Mason, from the roof of a building in Tudor Street showing the cathedral shrouded in smoke. Lisa Jardine of Queen Mary, University of London, has written:
Wreathed in billowing smoke, amidst the chaos and destruction of war, the pale dome stands proud and glorious—indomitable. At the height of that air-raid, Sir Winston Churchill telephoned the Guildhall to insist that all fire-fighting resources be directed at St Paul's. The cathedral must be saved, he said, damage to the fabric would sap the morale of the country.