News from Friends of the City Churches

We have used as our logo a "skyline" of City churches to emphasise the wide variety of styles of churches that we befriend in the City. Most of these, although on mediaeval sites, were re-built in the years after the Great Fire.

Wren, Evelyn and Hooke wanted to lay out a much cleaner and formal arrangement of the mediaeval street pattern, but they soon realised that individual landowners were not willing to forgo an inch of their irregular plots and mostly the streets are in recognisable form to a merchant of the 1620’s. Those churches that were rebuilt (and that was by no mean all—we lost both St Marys Magdalene, Old Fish Street and Milk Street for example) were expertly fitted on to their original sites after clearance of burnt remains— much dumped outside the city boundaries beyond Bishopsgate.

The severity of devastation must have been similar to that seen in recent photographs of the Indian Ocean Disaster, although the scale and loss of life was infinitesimal by comparison. Some of the sites were of bizarre shape; St Dionys Backchurch, in Lime Street, was a square with only one right angle, but this was pulled down in 1878 when Lime Street was widened. St Mary Aldermary, Bow Lane was re-built by Wren as a result of a generous benefaction from Henry Rogers, resulting in one of the finest examples of 17th Century Gothic Revival in the City. Wren’s wonderful plaster vaulting is somewhat bizarrely set against an East end that slants off to the North. This church is now in splendid condition after a major renovation. Do look inside and admire the newly painted interior, the restored North wall monuments (a special project organised and funded by the Friends of the City Churches) and the whole ambience of freshness and care that permeates the building.

Wenceslaus Holler’s Panorama of London made in 1647 from his view point in the tower of St Saviour Southwark, shows only too clearly the number of church towers and spires that dominated the skyline at that time. Of the 107 or so pre-Fire churches, 87 were burnt and only 51 were re-built. Wren did manage to ensure that his much-loved St Paul’s dominated the skyline, and subsequent planners have endeavoured to maintain key sight-lines to this day. In the fullness of time, no doubt, reconstruction will take place in desolated coast-line communities all around the Indian Ocean. City churches linked with those left homeless, bereaved and injured in the three minutes’ silence observed on January 5th. In a way, there was a shared experience.

Friends of the City Churches, St Magnus the Martyr, Lower Thames Street, London EC3R 6DN tel 020 7626 1555

e-mail      www.london-city-churches.org.uk