PISTOLS IN ST PAUL’S sounds like another detective novel by Richard Coles. It is not in fact a murder mystery, but it does concern something utterly mysterious to most of us. It is a book — and an intriguing one — about the dark art of architectural acoustics.

Since at least the time of the great Roman architect Vitruvius, designers have been interested in how buildings sound as well as the way they look. His tract, De architectura, written in the first century BC, contained material on how the resonance of rooms could be improved by burying clay pots in the walls. Christopher Wren was similarly intrigued. Comparing Roman Catholic places of worship with those he erected for the Reformed faith, he observed that “it is enough if they hear the murmur of the Mass . . . but ours are fitted for auditories.”

Yet, until the 20th century, approaches to the issue remained generally unsystematic. No one could even agree how the word “acoustics” should be pronounced. Starting with tests in Westminster Cathedral in 1901 and ending with experiments at St Paul’s in 1951, this wholly original study explores how experts learned to shape the sounds of architecture. The guns of the title, by the way, were not used for crime, but for elucidating how the criminally bad acoustics of Wren’s cathedral might be improved.

Along the way, we encounter the League of Nations, Abbey Road Studios, the Royal Festival Hall, and the Royal Albert Hall, where the echo was so atrocious that it was the only place “where there could be heard two concerts for the price of one”. We also explore London’s County Hall, where the council chamber’s acoustics were so poor that it was called “the hall of murmurs”.

Readers are introduced to the pioneers of acoustic science and their laboratories, as well as to period pieces like the “Akoustolith” and “Mascoustic”, both patent products considered for use in Delhi’s Assembly Chamber. “When I die,” wrote the architect, “you will find the words ‘Acoustic tiles’ engraved on my heart!” You will never see (or hear) a building in the same way again.

The Revd Dr William Whyte is a Fellow and Tutor of St John’s College, Oxford, and Professor of Social and Architectural History in the University of Oxford.

Pistols in St Paul’s: Science, music, and architecture in the twentieth century
Fiona Smyth
Manchester University Press £25
(978-1-5261-8020-9)
Church Times Bookshop £22.50