Built from to and dedicated to Saint Paul , this building was perhaps the fourth such church at this site on Ludgate Hill , going back to the 7th century. Work on the cathedral began after a fire in , which destroyed the previous church.
Work took more than years, and over that time the architecture of the church changed from Norman Romanesque to early English Gothic. The church was consecrated in , enlarged in and again in the early 14th century. At its completion in the midth century, the cathedral was one of the longest churches in the world , had one of the tallest spires and some of the finest stained glass. The continuing presence of the shrine of the 7th century bishop Saint Erkenwald made the cathedral a site of pilgrimage in the Middle Ages.
During the Reformation , the open-air pulpit in the churchyard, St Paul's Cross , became the place for radical evangelical preaching and Protestant bookselling. The cathedral was in structural decline by the early 17th century. Restoration work begun by Inigo Jones in the s was temporarily halted during the English Civil War — In , further restoration was in progress under Sir Christopher Wren when the cathedral was devastated in the Great Fire of London.
At that point, it was demolished, and the present cathedral was built on the site. Bishop Maurice oversaw preparations, although it was primarily under his successor, Richard de Beaumis , that construction work fully commenced. Beaumis was assisted by King Henry I , who gave the bishop stone and asked that all material brought up the River Fleet for the cathedral should be free from toll.
To fund the cathedral, Henry I gave Beaumis rights to all fish caught within the cathedral neighbourhood and tithes on venison taken in the County of Essex. Beaumis also gave a site for the original foundation of St Paul's School. Henry I's death was followed by a period of unrest and civil war known as " The Anarchy ". Almost immediately, he had to deal with the aftermath of a fire at London Bridge in It spread over much of the city, damaging the cathedral and delaying its construction.
