How St Paul's cathedral should be categorized in terms of architecture is outside the remit of our present objective. It was built during the baroque period, but it does not really have all the theatrical curves and elaborate decorations which go with this style; it is though the only classical cathedral in Britain and is most beautiful to admire. Less well known but more relevant for our purposes is that it has a fine churchyard, more a park, surrounding it, and in this churchyard can be found some good examples of the trees that interest us. Actually to get all the examples that I want to show off, I have had to wander outside the churchyard and sometimes cross the road, but all are within sight of the great edifice.

              Cathedrals were originally built so that everybody could kneel down and pray facing Jerusalem which is in the east. It was therefore useful to be facing east on entering, especially for processions. So the west front was normally the main entrance. At St Paul's, the west front has a large flat façade with two tiers of giant columns. It faces down to Ludgate Circus and Fleet Street in the west. Cathedrals were also built in the shape of the cross to symbolize Christ's crucifixion, so they all have transepts which jut out located on the north and south sides. The apse is located on the east side, or in layman's language, around the back. Our starting point is at the west front; the north side is to the left and the south side is on the right, that is of course assuming that you are facing the church and have not turned around to admire the view down towards Ludgate Circus and Fleet Street.

              If you look to your left before making your way around to the left side of the cathedral, you will see some small trees with plaques in front of them which announce that a certain corporate body is responsible for planting them; these are very young plane trees which hopefully one day will grow higher than the cathedral. These are for future generations to admire, though.

Trees of London        A James Wilkinson Publication ©