Old St. Paul’s Cathedral

Beneath the ground near Old St. Paul’s, excavators found heaps of cattle bones and stags’ horns. Were they offerings at a temple of Diana—or evidence too uncertain to settle the story?

In this early-20th-century history, William Benham follows the cathedral’s site from Roman London into the Christian city of Bishop Mellitus and King Sebert, then through conquest, fire, and rebuilding. The first church was probably built mostly of wood; after it burned in 1087, Bishop Maurice began a great Norman successor. Later generations reshaped its stonework to match changing styles and ambitions. Benham brings to life not only a building, but the bishops, kings, and Londoners whose fortunes gathered around it. How much of the cathedral’s deepest past can its traces—and the records left behind—really tell?

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