Latest Images of the Virtual Paul's Churchyard

Josh Stephens, our virtual cathedral contractor, has provided new images of the current state of his model. The image above shows the Choir and north transept of St. Paul's, the Paul's Cross Preaching Station, and the beginning of the commercial/residential buildings to the north of Paul's Churchyard.

These buildings were, of course, the home of the English book trade in the early 17th century.

And here is an overhead view.

Josh has also begun to work on the interior of St. Paul's in anticipation of our application for funding to recreate the experience of worship in the Choir. Here is his current version of a model of the Choir.

This image shows the Choir area without the Choir Screen or the stalls or the side walls, or the other furnishings familiar to us from Hollar's engraving.

So there is still much more to do on this model, but we have definitely come a long way in the Cathedral's  reconstruction.

John Donne at the University of Salford

Ben Crystal will be recording John Donne's Gunpowder Day Sermon for November 5th, 1622, in the Anechoic Chamber of the University of Salford, near Manchester, in early March.

An anechoic chamber is a room without echo, a room without reflections from the walls, floor or ceiling.
This means that the room adds no acoustic properties of its own to a recording made there.

As a result, when the sound of Ben's voice is heard in the virtual acoustic environment of Paul's Churchyard, it will sound as though it were being heard in that space, not in the space of the recording studio at the University of Salford.

The sermon Donne preached on November 5th, 1622, was, as we know, intended for delivery at Paul's Cross but was actually delivered in the Choir of St Paul's Cathedral "because of the weather."

So when Ben's voice realizes for us the words of Donne's sermon through our acoustic model of Paul's Cross, those words will be heard in the space where Donne intended to speak them, 400 years ago.