Rebuilding London: The Great Fire, Christopher Wren and the Royal Society.
In 1666 a spark from an unattended baker's oven in Pudding Lane led to the Great Fire of London, which levelled large areas of the city. After the flames had been put out and the dead buried, London was once more a blank canvas for the builders and architects to create a new city - a city that could be built in the grand style its destiny deserved.
Many of the men at the centre of London's reconstruction, among them Sir Christopher Wren, were members of the newly formed Royal Society. This avowedly scientific organisation was broad in scope, its early members being largely either proto-Freemasons or Rosicrucians and adhering to a Hermetic world-view.
They believed that Britain had a preordained role to fulfil as the leading Protestant nation in Europe, and central to this belief was the conviction that England was a new Israel, God's chosen country for the new age of enlightenment then dawning. This exclusive group of men equated the capital city, which they now set about building out of white stone instead of wood, with the prophesied New Jerusalem. They coded mystical significance into their new buildings.
In this book Adrian Gilbert takes the reader on a guided tour of a hidden London, revealing the true significance of such well-known sites as St Paul's Cathedral, the Monument and Temple church. He also introduces us to the men and women who shaped 17th century London, leaving us this legacy of mystical significance.
Combining personal detective story and archaeological investigation with rigorous historical research, 'The New Jerusalem' is a colourful historical portrait of London as we have never seen it before.
