[This is the sixth of 10 articles briefly describing the 39
functioning historic Anglican churches in the City of London]
I describe in this piece four churches on the periphery of
the City. All Hallows-by-the-Tower
is related most closely to the Tower of London and St Olave, Hart Street is very near the old Port of London Authority
building and maritime London. St Botolph
Aldgate has a decidedly East End feeling while St Giles Cripplegate is marooned awkwardly amid the unrelenting
modernity of the Barbican.
 |
| All Hallows by the Tower |
All Hallows is
the oldest Church in the City founded in 675. Its proximity to the Tower gave
it royal connections; more gruesomely the headless bodies of executed victims
were temporarily buried here like those of Sir Thomas More, Archbishop Fisher
and Archbishop Laud. Pepys witnessed the 1666 Great Fire from its tower. The
church was gutted in the Blitz and rebuilt in a rather uninspiring modern
idiom, although the modern steeple spike is pleasing. The great treasure within
is the 1682 baptismal font cover by Grinling Gibbons with exquisite carved
cherubs.
 |
| The Grinling Gibbons font cover |
“Tubby” Clayton, once an Army padre, was the admired Vicar
for 40 years from 1922 to 1962, best known as the co-founder of Toc H, the
organisation promoting fellowship among soldiers and ex-servicemen.
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St Olave Hart Street
has more of its neighbouring City shipping feel. It is medieval and the present
Perpendicular Gothic building dates from 1450. It just avoided the Great Fire
thanks to Admiral Penn (father of William Penn of Pennsylvania) whose prompt creation of a
fire-break saved many buildings in the area.
 |
| The cheerful interior of St Olave Hart Street |
St Olave has been described as an English country church in
the City and it has a homely village air, with its walls charmingly decorated,
good woodwork and plenty coloured glass. The many tombs and memorials include
those of Samuel Pepys and his long-suffering wife; the church was Pepys’
favourite.
The churchyard adjoining is entered through a portico
crowned by three grinning skulls, a common enough memento mori in earlier times, but an arresting sight to our
sanitised eyes.
 |
| Skulls above entrance to St Olave's churchyard |
St Botolph Aldgate
is at the bottom of Bevis Marks (home of the historic Spanish and Portuguese
Synagogue) and retail Houndsditch; Petticoat Lane is not far away, so it is an East
End rather than a City location. Jack the Ripper once terrorised the nearby
streets.
 |
| St Botolph Aldgate |
Built by George Dance the Elder in 1741, internally the
church is a conventional airy Georgian galleried church with lavish plaster
ceilings and additional adornments by JF Bentley, the late Victorian architect
of Westminster Cathedral. St Botolph is an unremarkable but busy parish church
effectively a mission to the East End with a
youth club in the crypt.
 |
| St Botolph Aldgate with Renatus Harris organ |
The church also possesses what is said to be the oldest
church organ in Britain,
built by Renatus Harris in 1702. It was recently carefully restored to its 1744
specification and reinstalled in 2006.
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Historic St Giles Cripplegate stands rather oddly
in the middle of the Barbican development to the North of the City, once a huge
bomb-site and now a place of high-rise flats and a fine theatre, cinema and
concert centre. Before the Blitz, Cripplegate was a busy thoroughfare outside
the original City wall. There had been a church here since the 11th
century, in the Saxon, Norman
and then Gothic manners. Fires (though not the 1666 Great Fire) had damaged the
church over the years and there were various reconstructions. The 1940 Blitz
gutted the church and it was rebuilt internally in the Perpendicular Gothic
style using the plans of 1545.
 |
| St Giles Cripplegate |
St Giles is most renowned for its historic associations.
John Foxe, author of The Book of Martyrs is buried here as is Sir
Martin Frobisher, a hero of the Spanish Armada and the supreme poet John Milton
(1674). Oliver Cromwell was married here in 1620 and both Daniel Defoe and John
Bunyan were parishioners. All are commemorated within this splendidly surviving
church.
SMD
14.03.13
Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2013
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