The taking down of the vast ruins of the old Cathedral made a heavy task, and Wren took to gunpowder for demolishing the piers of the old central tower. This worked well, but on its second employment by a subordinate, when Wren was out of town, too much gunpowder was used and a stone was blown into a neighbouring house. No bones were broken, but Wren was told to find less desperate methods and achieved his end with “that ancient Engine in War, the Battering-ram.” Wren’s troubles with the foundations made a long and too technical story for so slight a sketch as this, but it is fair to his memory to set down that though some early trouble was experienced from settlements which young Edward Strong, the son of Wren’s master-mason, was called in to repair, the present troubles are due more to the draining of the subsoil by recent engineering works, such as great sewers, and to the use of rubble inside a casing of ashlar, than to any defect in the foundation design. One notable change in the design of the West Front must be emphasised because it marks the influence, in this case the overmastering influence, of material over design. Wren devised the front with a single great Order (as Inigo Jones had done in the portico he added), therein following the scheme of St. Peter’s at Rome. Bramante had quarried at Tivoli pieces big enough for the drums of his columns, but had to spoil his cornices for lack of stones of adequate size. Wren was defeated in his hope of securing drums big enough from the Portland, Rock Abbey, and other quarries, and “for these Reasons the Surveyor concluded upon Portland-stone, and was able to use two Orders and by that Means to keep the just Proportions of his Cornices; otherwise he must have fallen short of the Heighth of the Fabrick, which now exerts itself over all the Country, as well as City, as it did of old, when that Structure, tho’ rude, was lofty and majestick.” [Illustration: PLATE V BUST BY EDWARD PEARCE AT THE ASHMOLEAN, DONE ABOUT 1673, AND SHOWING WREN AS A MAN OF FORTY-ONE.] The first stone of the new church was laid in 1675, and during thirty-five years, from the forty-third to the seventy-eighth of the architect’s life, St. Paul’s was his constant preoccupation. Troubles were many. The 1675 plan was without the two western chapels (that now used by the Order of St. Michael and St. George and its fellow on the north side). They were introduced into the scheme by the insistence of the Duke of York. But the fundamental novelty of St. Paul’s, the double dome, was present in his pre-Fire design, and whatever else was changed, that remained.