The Hidden Rooms Of St Paul’s Cathedral

Around 2 million people visit St Paul’s Cathedral every year and see its stunning nave, monuments to great figures from British history such as Nelson and Wellington, or possibly walk up to the dome. I have written a blog post before on 12 little details to spot on a visit.

I was, however, lucky enough recently to visit some of the secret rooms of St Paul’s. These can be seen on the Cathedral’s ‘Triforium tours’, more on how to book at the end of the blog.

The Dean’s Stair

This door, just around the corner from the main portico, is called the Dean’s Door. 

Behind it is an incredible helical, cantilevered staircase called the Dean’s Stair or ‘Geometric Stair’.

It consists of 88 stone stairs, that rise in a spiral 50ft up into the Cathedral. Designed by Sir Christopher Wren in around 1705, it was built by William Kempster and the design is ingenious. Each step is barely embedded in the wall, just 150mm, so it almost appears to float, with each step mostly supported the one below. 

Harry Potter fans will also no doubt recognise it from the third Harry Potter film! It was the staircase up to the Divination classroom.

Volunteers and guides at the Cathedral will usually show you this staircase if you ask them.

The Triforium Library

Ascend the staircase and you will come to a set of double wooden doors. Swing them open and you enter the Cathedral’s hidden library, or Triforium Library. 

Completed in 1709, it was designed by Wren and Nicholas Hawksmoor and his master craftsmen executed the work.

It has one of the best preserved 18th century interiors in London, with lots of incredible details. The pilaster columns display carved images of mortar boards and books.

The brackets underneath the walkway are purely decorative, but they have various intricate carvings in the style of Grinling Gibbons.

Gibbons would famously carve a peapod somewhere in his work. It is said that, if the peapod was portrayed open, then it indicated he had been paid on time for the work, if it was closed then he had not, thankfully these peapods are open. 

The library’s collection contains around 13,000 books on site. The Great Fire of London in 1666 destroyed almost the entire collection of the Cathedral at that time. The collection today has therefore been put together and acquired in the years since. In 1712, for example, they received the collection of Henry Compton, late Bishop of London, containing over two thousands volumes.

One of the most significant items they have is one of three original copies of William Tyndale’s Bible in the English language from 1526. Tyndale’s Bible brought Reformation ideals to the country and, for the first time, ordinary people could read and understand its words.

A Recent Restoration

Bar electric lighting and heating being installed in the early 1900s, the library has remained almost exactly how it was back in the 18th century.

It has recently reopened after an over five year restoration.

13,000 books were removed and stored at the RAF base at Upper Heyford, in shelters used to store planes during the Cold War. It is not the first time the collection has moved, it was taken to the National Library of Wales during World War Two. 

Tests were carried out to restore Wren’s original paintwork, the walkways were restored, new lighting put in and a new temperature control system was installed.

The ‘BBC View’ And Stone Fragments

From the library you walk out to get this breathtaking view of the nave of St Paul’s. 

This is where TV camera crews will often be positioned for events such as royal weddings.

You enter a corridor where they also have a collection of stones from the previous medieval St Paul’s Cathedral lost to the Great Fire, as well as unused altars, crucifixes and more.

The Model Room

I then had a look inside the model room, which contains one of the most incredible architectural models ever created.

When Wren was designing St Paul’s, he had a lot of different groups of people to keep happy: the commissioners in charge of the rebuild, the clergy and the King.

He made a small model for his first design. It would have been in the form of an oblong basilica, with, unusually, an arcaded covered walkway around the outside.

It was only about a third of the size of the current cathedral and was rejected for being too modest. The model itself was lost for many years and only rediscovered in 1935 in its current form seen above.

The Great Model

He then created the ‘Great Model’, the centrepiece of the model room today.

Wren took nearly two years to design and then build and paint the Great Model.

It is at a scale of 1:25 and is made primarily out of oak. It cost around £500-600 to make, roughly the same amount to build a large house in that period. 

The idea behind the model was ‘that a Man might stand within it, the better to consider all the proportions of the same as well within as without’.

The Great Model, a Greek cross design, ended up being rejected for departing too much from a traditional Cathedral.

It was the next design, the ‘warrant design’, as it became known, that received the final approval. It looked rather different from the St Paul’s Cathedral of today however, but the King put in a proviso into the contract that Wren could make necessary aesthetic changes during construction.

He very much took that clause and ran with it, making pretty significant changes, giving us the masterpiece that is St Paul’s Cathedral today.

How To Visit

The Triforium tour lasts an hour and costs £15 for adults.

The dates they do them seem fairly random. You can have a look at current available dates here.

Thank you for reading, more of London’s hidden history below!