The Cultural Geography of St Paul’s Precinct
This chapter is a cultural study of St Paul’s Cathedral precinct in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. It discusses the physical properties of Paul’s, including the nave, Paul’s Cross pulpit, the bookshops in the churchyard, and the many and varied uses and occupations of the precinct and church, including sermons, secular business practices, and criminal activity. While recent scholarship has attended to various discreet spaces in and around the cathedral, this chapter discusses the religious and secular space and activities as mutually constitutive rather than distinct. Influenced by studies of cultural geography, the chapter investigates the role of the cathedral precinct in constructing the identity of the early modern Londoner through a discussion of the effects that geographical space has on human behaviour.