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CITY CHURCHES - PART 1
A stomp around 52 medieval churches in the City of London in a day
City Churches 1: About
August 23rd 2021 is my grandmother’s 131st birthday and to celebrate it, I am heading off to the city of her birth for the first time in over 18 months due to the various government restrictions that the pandemic has blessed us with. Getting on the train brings back memories of a time long ago when you didn’t have to arm yourself with a variety of masks to keep a virus at bay. The train is fairly deserted as is the first underground train I take. The second is busier but I’m surgically masked to protect both myself and others and it’s only one stop on the Circle Line to Temple station where I alight and begin my journey. My mission: to visit as many of the 110 medieval churches that still remain after centuries of fire, redevelopment, Luftwaffe bombs and wanton destruction. By my reckoning there are 47 existing churches along with another ten sets of ruins. Actually, it’s not my reckoning at all. The map I’m using comes from the website of The Friends of the City Churches and, whilst it shows the accurate location of all the medieval churches within the square mile that is the City of London, it turns out it has acquired a few outlying edifices which I visit but then remove from my list when I return home.
It is a short walk through the tranquil grounds of the Temple, the home of the British legal profession. I peruse the names on the doors of the various chambers, noting a few Queens Councils here and the odd Lord and Dame there. I remember the first time I ambled into the Temple grounds, thinking how peaceful and quiet they were, nestling in the heart of a busy, bustling capital city.
1. Temple Church 8:38
The Temple gets its name from the Knights Templar whose Temple church is my first stop. The previous time I’d wandered past, I’d been deterred from entering by an admission charge but today no costs would be spared. It was closed. I wasn’t too disappointed as I’d been inside before and had prepared myself that few of the churches would be open during a time of national uncertainty. The Knights Templar were a military branch of the Catholic Church, created to protect pilgrims on their journeys to various religious sites. The church is in two parts; the chancel with the altar and a round section, built to resemble the holiest of Christian places, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. It was the Patriarch of Jerusalem who consecrated the church in 1185. Within the church are nine 13th century effigies, the most notable being the effigy of William Marshall, the 1st Earl of Pembroke and advisor to the Plantagenet kings Henry II, Richard I (Lionheart) and John. He was also the regent during the minority of John’s son Henry III.
City Churches 1: Text
2. Â Â Â Â St. Dunstan-in-the-West 8:40
Leaving the calm of the Temple, I emerge onto Fleet Street and across the road is the facade of St. Dunstan-in-the-West, sandwiched between two buildings, one of which advertises in large banners the names of publications that left Fleet Street many years ago. The notice on the door tells me that the church opens at 10:00am but I have a tight schedule so a look inside will have to wait for another day. No-one is quite sure when the first church was built on the site of the main thoroughfare from the city to Westminster. It may have been consecrated by St Dunstan himself, a 10th century Bishop of London and later Archbishop of Canterbury. The original church survived until the 1830s when it was demolished to make way for the widening of Fleet Street. A new building was constructed back from the road, the one we see today.
City Churches 1: About
3.     St. Brides  8:45
Known as the wedding cake church because its spire, the tallest of any that Sir Christopher Wren built, resembles the tiers of a wedding cake. Wren was commissioned to design 52 of the 70 churches designated for rebuilding after the devastation of the Great Fire of London in 1666. Once again, the church is closed but fortunately on my last visit to the capital, I’d been able to explore the inside of the a church long associated with journalists and newspapers. The pews carry plaques with the names of many reporters, editors and proprietors. When the church was damaged in the blitz, the original walls were revealed deep underground and you can see them in the crypt museum along with two Roman tessellated pavements and a rare iron coffin. The coffin dates from the time when body snatchers were making a unhealthy living providing bodies for medical research and training. Unfortunately, although the metal boxes proved to be a suitable deterrent to the criminals, the church authorities found them inconvenient as it took the corpses too long to decompose and held up reusing the space for future burials.
City Churches 1: Text
4. Â Â Â Â St Martin within Ludgate 8:49
St. Martin of Tours is a patron saint of travellers so here is an appropriate place for me to enter and rest my weary feet. Except that it’s also closed and I’ve only just begun my marathon. Like many of the churches I am to visit today, it’s name is descriptive of its location, Ludgate being the most westerly gate in the old London Wall. From the other side of Ludgate Hill, the church is immediately recognisable because of the spire that rises above the rooftops of the neighbouring buildings. I cross the road with little difficulty due to a distinct lack of traffic. Usually the City is manically busy on a weekday but today feels like a weekend rather than a Monday morning. I suspect many city workers are still working from home despite the relaxation of Covid-19 restrictions. St Martins is another Wren rebuild after the Great Fire but it emerged from World War II relatively unscathed. The Great Fire of 1666 was the most devastating of a series of fires that would regularly sweep through the city, encouraged by wooden buildings packed closely together. If you’d have asked Londoners at the time about the Great Fire, they’d have wondered if you were referring to the Great Fire of 1133 or the Great Fire of 1212. There’d been the Fairly Substantial Fire of 1633 which destroyed a large area on and around London Bridge. Because much of this area had yet to be rebuilt 33 years later, it provided a firebreak during 1666 which saved London Bridge and the array of building that perched on top of it.
City Churches 1: About
5. Â Â Â Â St. Andrew by the Wardrobe 8:54
At last, a church that’s open. The church is empty, save for two men chatting in a room at the back. I am struck by the simplicity of the design and the dim lighting. Wren obviously kept to the basics when rebuilding this strangely named edifice. The church was originally part of Baynard’s Castle, a riverside royal palace that has long since disappeared. Edward IV decided to move his royal wardrobe, containing clothes, arms and various accessories a king needs, from the Tower of London to a storage building next to the church, hence its unusual name. It was badly damaged during the war and since then has acquired a magpie-like reputation for filling its empty shell with bits and pieces from a host of other city churches: the pulpit, the font, the royal arms and some statues of saints all began life elsewhere. I am not inclined to linger long and make my exit.
City Churches 1: About
6. Â Â Â Â St. Benet Welsh Church 8:59
St. Benet stands on the other side of Queen Victoria Street and very pretty it looks too. I descend some modern steps to the church door to find it locked. Normal service is resumed. A search on Google reveals that the church has a service once a week and is open to visitors for a couple of hours on a Thursday. St. Benet is actually an abbreviated version of St. Benedict and the church was originally on the bank of the River Thames, once a wide and in places fairly shallow river. At one time it was possible to ford across it at Westminster but centuries of building and reclamation have narrowed the river considerably. The church burnt to the ground in 1666 but emerged from World War II unscathed, one of only four churches in the city to escape damage. It nearly didn’t make it to the 20th century when it’s parish was merged with that of St. Nicholas Cole Abbey, but Queen Victoria saved it from destruction, presenting it to the Welsh Anglican community who continue to use it - just not very often.
City Churches 1: About
7. Â Â Â Â St. Mary Somerset 9:04
There are no access difficulties at St. Mary Somerset, a short walk along the soulless Queen Victoria Street, because only the tower remains of what was one of last churches completed by Wren. It’s destruction was due to dwindling populations in the 19th century as the railways enticed city workers to move into the suburbs. In 1860, the Union of Benefices Act was passed by Parliament and this resulted in the merger of many parishes. St. Mary’s was one of the unlucky ones but the tower was preserved and today the area around it has been laid out as a garden, a welcome oasis of green in this rather grey part of the city. No one knows where the name Somerset comes from but with 14 medieval St. Mary’s, it had to have some distinguishing name so I suppose Somerset is as good as any. I now begin to move north away from the river towards St. Paul’s Cathedral, Wren's undoubted masterpiece.
City Churches 1: About
8. St. Nicholas Cole Abbey 9:05
A minute away is the building that absorbed the congregations of my two previous churches along with that of St. Nicholas Olave, one of many churches that was never rebuilt after the Great Fire. This St. Nicholas was luckier, ring rebuilt twice. The name Cole Abbey might suggest monastic connections but it is a corruption of the word ‘coldharbour’ which was a place a traveller could stay and take refuge from the cold. Fortunately, I’m visiting on a summer’s day because there is no refuge for me. The whole of its southern side fronts the main road but once I’ve seen it, I quickly move on to my next stop.
9. St. Augustine Watling Street 9:10
This is my second solo tower but it is completely overshadowed by St.Paul’s Cathedral which stands a short distance away. My intention is to return to St. Paul’s once I’ve completed my city churches and reluctantly pay to go inside, although as my walk progresses, I decide to visit Westminster Abbey instead which I find a much more fascinating building, plus it has lots of royal tombs which curiously tick my boxes. The Watling Street in the church’s name is the same one that crosses the Midlands and once formed a border between Anglo-Saxon Mercia and Viking Danelaw. The Roman road crossed the Thames at Londinium and continued onwards to the Kent coast. Poor old St Augustine’s was destroyed by German bombs and was never rebuilt.
City Churches 1: Text
10. Â Â St. Vedast alias Foster 9:12
This wins the title for the weirdest named church on my journey. St Vedast is a French saint, little known in this country - there is only one other church dedicated to him. The church is on Foster Lane, hence the name, Foster being a corruption of the word Vedast, a little known French saint!
City Churches 1: About
11. St. Mary Le Bow 9:15
St. Mary Le Bow stands on the southern side of Cheapside, a road running from St. Paul’s to the Bank of England and the Royal Exchange. In medieval times, it was second in importance to St. Paul’s and for that reason was one of the first that Wren worked on after the Great Fire. When I get there, the doors are open , but I only have a cursory glance inside because I’ve been before. Its bells are famous on three counts. Firstly, anyone born within the sound of Bow bells is born a cockney. My grandmother came from Finchley in north London, but she always said her father had been born a cockney. When I began researching my family tree, I hit a blank with my great grandfather. I could find no record of his birth in London and began to doubt the veracity of my grandmother’s story. Then I found a reference to his father’s tragic death, crushed between two railway wagons whilst working on the railways, and discovered the family came from Kent. Further digging showed that my great grandfather had been born, not in Kent, but in a London hospital within the sound of Bow bells, making him a cockney after all.
The second claim to fame is that it has the ‘Great Bell of Bow’ in the nursery rhyme Oranges and Lemons. The only other bells definitely from a city church are the bells of Old Bailey, but as the Old Bailey never had any bells, it probably refers to the execution bell in St. Sepulchre- more of that later. The final claim to fame relates to the traditional story of Dick Whittington returning to London after hearing the bells as he left the city. In 1091, it was destroyed by a freak tornado and when it was rebuilt, it featured two prominent arches or ‘bows’ and became known as St.Mary de Arcabus which in time has become ‘Le Bow’.
City Churches 1: Text
12. Â Â St. Mary Aldermary 9:20
I head off in the direction of my next church, wandering down small streets until I am back on Watling Street again. The doors are open so I can enter the second new church of my journey. Described as one of the finest Gothic churches in England, it is light and airy inside with a beautifully sculpted white ceiling. On either side of the aisle there is a second tier, reminding me of Birmingham Cathedral and another journey taken many years ago. I examine the monuments on the wall and feel a pang of sympathy for Sir Henry Keeble, a sixteenth century benefactor who paid for a new tower and was ceremoniously buried in the church, only to have his bones turfed out a while later to make way for a more illustrious body. It is the home of the Moot community, modern day monastic types who spend their time in prayer and contemplation, a peaceful life which contrasts starkly with the church’s other affiliation- the Royal Tank Regiment.
City Churches 1: About
13. Â Â St. James Garlckhythe 9:24
Garlickhythe refers to the hythe or landing place on the River Thames where garlic used to be sold. Although I can’t access the inside, I can examine an interesting sculpture of a man in ceremonial uniform and a swan that stands near the entrance to the church. The guild of vintners or wine makers were one of three guilds who owned swans on the river in times gone by. Every year, they would set off in highly decorated barges to mark their swans, a process called swan-upping. The statue is located here because St James is where the vintners hold their annual service. On 18th November 1535, Edward Butler was baptised in the church, his entry into the Christian community being the oldest recorded baptism in England’s parish records.
City Churches 1: About
14. Â Â St Michael Paternoster Royal 9:27
I had been inside the Mission to Seamen’s church on a guided walk through this part of London about six months before the first lockdown. On that occasion, I was able to marvel at the stunning stained glass windows, something of a rarity in these city churches. The name Paternoster Royal derives from the sellers of paternoster or rosaries who plied their trade on what is now College Hill. There are copious connections with Dick Whittington here. He lived nearby, I passed a plaque informing me of this, and was buried in the pre-fire church before being dug up and reburied a couple of times. A 20th century attempt to find his remains proved fruitless but they did discover a mummified cat! Destroyed in the blitz, this was the last church to be restored, the Duke of Edinburgh reopening it in 1968.
City Churches 1: Text
15. Â Â St. Stephen Walbrook 9:30
I am struck by the incongruity of a Wren church nestling up to yet another branch of Starbucks as I approach. The Walbrook is one of many rivers flowing through London that have been diverted through culverts underground. In Roman times, this was the site of their temple of Mithras, with the early Christians building a church here to sanctify a heathen place of worship. Following the fire, it was merged with a neighbouring parish with St. Stephen’s getting the nod for rebuilding rather than the more strangely named church of St. Benet Sherehog, a sherehog being a castrated ram.
City Churches 1: About
16. St. Mary Woolnoth 9:35
In 1711, an act of Parliament established the Commission to Build Fifty New Churches. It employed the architect Nicholas Hawksmoor to design what are now called Queen Anne churches to meet the growing population in the London conurbations and St. Mary Woolnoth is the only surviving example of his work in the City, although he did redesign the tower of St. Michael Cornhill. He rebuilt an earlier church which had already been rebuilt by Wren. Woolnoth may well refer to an early benefactor.
17. St. Mary Abchurch 9:37
The guided walk that I mentioned previously also called in at this little gem, surrounded by a warren of narrow side streets and alleys much like it would have done when it was rebuilt by Wren. It is open so I am able to pop inside to see again the wonderful carved screen or reredos behind the altar, carved by the master craftsman Grinling Gibbons. Although his work can be seen in churches, houses and palaces across the country, this is the sole example in a city church although he did create some carvings for St.Paul’s cathedral. The ceiling is in the shape of a highly decorated dome that is supported just by the walls with no buttresses: well that's according to my search online. It does make the interior feel more spacious than it actually is.
18. St. Martin Orgar 9:42
All that remains of this pre-fire church is a splendid tower that was restored as a campanile or bell tower for my next stop, St. Clement’s. The Orgar in its name comes from an erstwhile deacon at St. Paul’s who gave the parish to the canons at the cathedral. It could be the St. Martins in the nursery rhyme, the one owing five farthings, although St Martin in the Fields on Trafalgar Square is another contender. Without crossing the expanse of Canon Street, I continue my journey
19. St. Clement Eastcheap 9:49
Hemmed in by other buildings, with a squat tower, St. Clement blends into the landscape more than any other church I’ve encountered so far. I can’t inspect it’s unusual irregular shaped interior so I move on. It is, like the previous church, a claimant for Oranges and Lemons, its supporters arguing that fruit landed from the Thames would have passed the church on its way to Leadenhall Market. However, St Clements was probably chosen by the creator of the nursery rhyme because it sort of rhymes with lemons. St. Clement Danes, just outside the city, also lays claim to being the first set of bells mentioned.
City Churches 1: Text
20. Â Â St. Magnus the Martyr 9:49
This is another one that I’ve been inside before but not today. It is a significant edifice, being on the approach road to the old London Bridge. The bridge supported a variety of buildings including a water mill, a chapel and the grand Nonsuch House at the southern end with its seemingly continuous display of the severed heads of traitors on spikes in more violent times. There are some stones from the original bridge lying outside the church entrance. I once made a model of the medieval church out of card, such was my fascination with the ancient structure. It was held up by a succession of arches and these restricted the flow of water so much that the Thames would regularly freeze on the western side of the bridge with frost fairs being held on the ice. It also created rapids for the water boatmen who carried their passengers up and down the river, causing many accidents and a fair few casualties. This is the most southerly church I shall visit, and from here I turn north.
City Churches 1: About
21. St. Mary-at-Hill 9:52
I cross over Thames Street from St.. Magnus and pass the entrance to Pudding Lane where the Great Fire began. I catch glimpses of the Monument which commemorates the fire and which I’ve climbed before. Researching a talk on the London Underground, I discovered that the MP Charles Pearson not only proposed the world’s first underground railway but he also campaigned to have an inscription blaming the Catholics for the fire removed from the Monument. St. Mary-at-Hill is a short distance further along on a road of the same name. I am not far from the old Billingsgate fish market which had strong connections with the church. Had I come a day later, I’d have been able to go inside, but today I can only admire its facade complete with a clock sticking out at right angles.
22. St. Margaret Pattens 9:53
A short walk north brings me to St. Mary Pattens. This is a guild church, open during more normal times for prayer, but having few services. It is most likely named after Pattens, the wooden overshoes worn in medieval times to protect people’s leather shoes from the mud and filth of the city streets. The Worshipful Company of Pattenmakers, along with the Basketmakers use this church for their services.
City Churches 1: Text
23. Â Â St.Dunstan-in-the-East 9:55
Having visited St. Dunstan in the West near the start of this odyssey, I am now at what remains of St. Dunstan-in-the-East. A German bomb destroyed the interior leaving a tower and the outer shell. However, these have been transformed into gardens which I wander through, appreciating the peaceful setting along with several others who are occupying the benches and enjoying a rare dash of summer sunshine.
City Churches 1: About
24. All Hallows’ by the Tower 10:00
A notice on the wall of the church declares this to be the oldest church in the city. I am able to see it from some distance away and it was from the top of its tower that Samuel Pepys observed the fire of 1666 raging before burying his cheeses and fleeing the area. I have been inside before but not today as it is all locked up. Continuing my journey across to nearby Tower Green, I find a monument to all those executed on the rising ground beside the Tower of London.
25. St. Olave Hart Steet 10:05
According to my original schedule, I am approaching the mid point of my collection although this turns out to be incorrect as I will soon discover. Before I partake of welcome cup of coffee, I make my way to St. Olave Hart Street. This church also has associations with Samuel Pepys who worshipped here and is also buried alongside his wife Elizabeth. The church, one of the smallest in the city, survived the Great Fire due to a combination of the destruction of nearby wooden buildings by William Penn, father of the founder of Pennsylvania, and a change in wind direction. The graveyard once held the bodies of 300 plague victims from the year before the fire. There is a small courtyard in front of the church which is open. My hopes rise. The door to the church however is firmly closed. I have to satisfy myself with reading the information boards in the churchyard. Though lucky in 1666, it was not to escape the blitz and much reconstruction was needed in the 1950s before it was rededicated in the presence of King Haakon II of Norway: St. Olave or King Olaf II is the patron saint of Norway and fought alongside Ethelred the Unready against the heathen Vikings at the Battle of London Bridge in 1014 - allegedly.
26. All Hallows Staining 10:11
I find All Hallows’ next to St. Olave’s parish hall, its parish having been joined with St. Olave's in 1870. It was badly damaged during World War II and just the tower remains. This is the second church with the word Staining attached and a quick Google shows it means made of stone, to distinguish it from other wooden All Hallows.
City Churches 1: Text
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