St Stephen Walbrook Wren's Dome
This was my first visit to this Church in the City of London and I planned it for a time when there were no services or Events and I was rewarded by an empty building for a lot of my visit. It was the first of the City Churches to be rebuilt after the great fire of 1666. This may have been influenced by the great Architect Sir Christopher Wren living on the same street. His design of the Dome may well have influenced his design of the much larger Dome of nearby St Pauls Cathedral. The church has some unusual circular features. The pews are in a circle surrounding a plain circular stone topped with a plain white cloth forming the Altar which is directly under the centre of the Dome. I took the picture with a fisheye lens, more circles. I must make a confession. The lack of the usual roped off area for the Altar and its plainness plus nobody about led me to putting the camera down right in the middle to get it perfectly lined up with the Dome. I triggered the shot with a remote release. There is a considerable contrast between this small beautiful Church and the nearby St Pauls Cathedral which strictly forbids any photography including with mobiles.
There is an interesting history related to this Church and the previous churches on the site. In the second century A.D. a temple of Mithras stood on the bank of the Walbrook, a stream running across London. In this temple Roman soldiers sought valour and virility in shower-baths of hot blood from slaughtered bulls. After the recall of the legions to Rome in 410 A.D. the building became a quarry; the locals left only the foundations. These were discovered when Bucklersbury House was built in 1953-1957, and they are preserved to this day. However, there were no foundations of the Christian church which stood on the site and was a going concern in 1090 A.D. when it was given to the monastery of St. John. It was Saxon, not Norman, and must have been built on the Mithraic foundations to hallow a heathen site. This could have been as early as 700 A.D., or as late as 980.
By 1428 this church and its graveyard were too small for the parish, and licences were obtained to build a larger church on higher ground some twenty metres to the east, the ground having risen about six metres; and Walbrook, no longer a stream, was now a street. The building, of flint and rubble with stone dressings, had a tower at the west and a cloister on the north. It was one of a hundred churches in the square mile of the City of London. Then, early on Sunday, 2nd September, 1666, a fire in a bakery near London Bridge became out of control and a strong wind fanned the flames westward. Not only the wooden houses and their furnishings, but warehouses with their stocks, and public buildings, and churches of brick and stone, were consumed in the fierce heat - molten lead running in the gutters, while stone was burnt to lime. Within twenty-four hours, St. Stephen Walbrook was burnt to the ground along with three-quarters of London.
The first stones of the new Church were laid in 1672 and with Wren working also on the design of St Pauls this was possibly the highpoint of his career. By the eighteenth century, St Stephen was famous all over Europe for its design
The picture was taken with a Sony A68 with a Samyang 8mm fisheye lens. I took 3 shots for HDR processed in Photomatix using contrast optimiser for a natural look. I copied the minus 2 image in as a new layer and used a layer mask to apply that only to bring down highlights in the windows. Further processing using Topaz Clarity for more detail Then I used Topaz Adjust for only the vignette feature to focus more on the Dome. Extra punch and clarity using unsharp mask 40 amount and 40 radius
For my Photography books Understand Your Camera and Compose Better Pictures see My Author Page USA or My Author Page UK
Please visit my │ Facebook Page
For Galleries, Prints and Licences see Edwin Jones Photography
St Stephen Walbrook Wren's Dome
This was my first visit to this Church in the City of London and I planned it for a time when there were no services or Events and I was rewarded by an empty building for a lot of my visit. It was the first of the City Churches to be rebuilt after the great fire of 1666. This may have been influenced by the great Architect Sir Christopher Wren living on the same street. His design of the Dome may well have influenced his design of the much larger Dome of nearby St Pauls Cathedral. The church has some unusual circular features. The pews are in a circle surrounding a plain circular stone topped with a plain white cloth forming the Altar which is directly under the centre of the Dome. I took the picture with a fisheye lens, more circles. I must make a confession. The lack of the usual roped off area for the Altar and its plainness plus nobody about led me to putting the camera down right in the middle to get it perfectly lined up with the Dome. I triggered the shot with a remote release. There is a considerable contrast between this small beautiful Church and the nearby St Pauls Cathedral which strictly forbids any photography including with mobiles.
There is an interesting history related to this Church and the previous churches on the site. In the second century A.D. a temple of Mithras stood on the bank of the Walbrook, a stream running across London. In this temple Roman soldiers sought valour and virility in shower-baths of hot blood from slaughtered bulls. After the recall of the legions to Rome in 410 A.D. the building became a quarry; the locals left only the foundations. These were discovered when Bucklersbury House was built in 1953-1957, and they are preserved to this day. However, there were no foundations of the Christian church which stood on the site and was a going concern in 1090 A.D. when it was given to the monastery of St. John. It was Saxon, not Norman, and must have been built on the Mithraic foundations to hallow a heathen site. This could have been as early as 700 A.D., or as late as 980.
By 1428 this church and its graveyard were too small for the parish, and licences were obtained to build a larger church on higher ground some twenty metres to the east, the ground having risen about six metres; and Walbrook, no longer a stream, was now a street. The building, of flint and rubble with stone dressings, had a tower at the west and a cloister on the north. It was one of a hundred churches in the square mile of the City of London. Then, early on Sunday, 2nd September, 1666, a fire in a bakery near London Bridge became out of control and a strong wind fanned the flames westward. Not only the wooden houses and their furnishings, but warehouses with their stocks, and public buildings, and churches of brick and stone, were consumed in the fierce heat - molten lead running in the gutters, while stone was burnt to lime. Within twenty-four hours, St. Stephen Walbrook was burnt to the ground along with three-quarters of London.
The first stones of the new Church were laid in 1672 and with Wren working also on the design of St Pauls this was possibly the highpoint of his career. By the eighteenth century, St Stephen was famous all over Europe for its design
The picture was taken with a Sony A68 with a Samyang 8mm fisheye lens. I took 3 shots for HDR processed in Photomatix using contrast optimiser for a natural look. I copied the minus 2 image in as a new layer and used a layer mask to apply that only to bring down highlights in the windows. Further processing using Topaz Clarity for more detail Then I used Topaz Adjust for only the vignette feature to focus more on the Dome. Extra punch and clarity using unsharp mask 40 amount and 40 radius
For my Photography books Understand Your Camera and Compose Better Pictures see My Author Page USA or My Author Page UK
Please visit my │ Facebook Page
For Galleries, Prints and Licences see Edwin Jones Photography