The building of St Paul’s took many years. The first stone was laid on 21st June 1675; the last stone of the cupola was laid by his son in the old man’s presence in 1710. During this period of thirty-five years Wren practically rebuilt the city churches, and was thus continually gaining experience. The great cathedral will always be his chief monument, but the fifty-three churches which he carried out would themselves have made his reputation. The sites were mostly irregular, but of so much value that it was essential to utilise them completely. Wren covered them to the last inch, and yet contrived to get that classic treatment in which symmetry plays so important a part. In many hands symmetry would have meant extravagance in space and materials. The problem in planning was new in another respect, for the churches were all designed for the Protestant form of worship, requiring an arrangement different from that of mediæval churches, and, among other things, a suitable auditorium. To his skill in planning he added a constant variety of treatment, both inside and out; and, given a departure from the simple straight lines of a Gothic spire, nothing could exceed the happy ingenuity and fertility of design exhibited in Wren’s steeples. Wren did not pass his whole time in designing ecclesiastical buildings. He had the chief share in the shaping of Greenwich Hospital which, originally intended for a palace, was begun and continued in a palatial manner, although diverted from its first purpose and made into a home for worn-out sailors (Fig. 98). He also began the rebuilding of Hampton Court, but happily did not proceed, as was at one time contemplated, to sweep away the whole of the older portions of that fascinating place. These are both in a sense domestic work, but they are not domestic in the way that appeals to the ordinary person. People who live in palaces may well afford some sacrifice to grandeur. Wren’s was the grand manner. His churches involved fairly simple planning. Their requirements lent themselves to this treatment much more readily than those of an ordinary house with its complicated demands, where an uncomfortable plan is not atoned for by splendour of appearance. If it be asked how Wren would have faced the difficulties of ordinary domestic planning, there is but little material for an answer. The work he did in the Temple does not help us much. Several houses in different parts of the country are attributed to him, but without much reliable evidence. At All Souls, however, there are a few drawings, either of new houses or of alterations to old ones, and these do not go to prove that he had his usual masterful grip of the subject. Doubtless, had the necessity arisen, he would have acquired it, but his energies took another direction, and he has left no solution of how to build a house at once convenient, comfortable, and grand.