SIR,—Miss Glynn Grylls' suggestion that Wren's plan for the rebuilding
of the City should be put into effect is an interesting one. In many respects the plan looks as though it should still work admirably, although the increased number of bridges across the Thames, built since Wren's day, would obviously demand more main thoroughfares from North to South than he provided for. But it Is more for its principles than for its details that the helpful. Wren established certain points which were focal both for geographic and civic reasons, chief among them St. Paul's, the head of London Bridge, the Royal Exchange, and various large 13,3zzas plan might be from which streets were to radiate. His main thoroughfares were to run straight from Fleet Street, by St. Paul's and the RnYal Exchange to Aldgate ; branching from St. Paul's to the Tower, along the riverside from the Temple to the Tower ; and from the Royal Exchange past the Guildhall and Newgate to join Holborn. The main direction of traffic from East to West still follows these lines, and even if, as one passionately hopes, the City is not swept so clean by Hitler as by the Great Fire, there will surely be oppor- tunity to make these lines run straight. It was lost in Wren's day by the pigheadedness of the citizens, who thought they would be cheated if they did not build exactly on 'their former sites, and who saw a sinister connexion between organised town-planning and Royal Absolutism. One hopes that the opportunity will not be lost again, and if a plan were drawn up now marking out the future main thoroughfares and focal points, one might even manage to feel quite cheerful and interested about any gratuitous demolitions which cleared the way for them. At least we might be getting on with this negative side to the problem, while looking to the future for an architect as magnificently positive as Wren to design something worth looking at for these splendid thoroughfares to lead to.—Yours truly, Pilgrim? Hall, Brentwood, Essex. LESLEY LAWRENCE.
Previous page
