Sidney's Place: THE CITY OF LONDON CHURCHES (5): Undershaft to Bishopsgate

The area around Undershaft is dominated by Shipping and Insurance. Lloyds of London functions in nearby Leadenhall Street and there are dozens of busy brokers and insurance offices in the adjoining streets. The Baltic Exchange used to have a trading floor broking shipping freight space in St Mary Axe but its building was devastated by an IRA bomb in 1992 and now all this market’s business is transacted over the phone, though freight rates are reported daily. Amid this frantic commercial whirl stands St Andrew Undershaft, dating from 1532 in the Perpendicular Gothic style, a rare survivor of both the Great Fire and the Blitz although the IRA bomb blew to smithereens a large Tudor stained glass window

St Andrew Undershaft

John Stow's Memorial

The tower of St Andrew is visibly off-centre from the nave: the church is overlooked by the massive “Gherkin” office bloc and by the St Helens skyscraper, once known as the Aviva Tower. The interior of St Andrew is determinedly modern and evangelical Anglicans come by at lunchtime to study the Bible piled on a range of reading tables. No doubt even the words of Jeremiah, Amos and Habakkuk give some relief from their dismal trade of premium calculating, loss adjusting and cover limitation.

In a corner at the East end is the monument to John Stow, the 1598 early chronicler of London. Every year the Lord Mayor changes the quill pen held in Stow’s hand, a pleasing tradition.

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Moving towards Bishopsgate takes us to the historic church of Great St Helens, another survivor of the Fire. St Helen’s, said to be the largest church in the City, (although St Andrew Holborn claims the same distinction) is rather odd architecturally. It has two wide naves as it was once partly a Priory housing in the 14^th century a community of Benedictine nuns. They were screened off from the parishioners who occupied the other nave. The two parts were united after the Reformation and there are Laudian additions of door porticos and a pretty wooden tower. The church has a great wealth of tombs and monuments from the 16^th and 17^th centuries, the finest in the City. The most famous is the 1579 tomb of Sir Thomas Gresham, the Elizabethan City grandee who founded the Royal Exchange and whose grasshopper device is still to be seen on the frieze and weather-vane of the rebuilt Royal Exchange. It was also adopted as the sign of Martins Bank (since absorbed by Barclays) and the ironwork grasshopper sign still hangs quaintly in Lombard Street.

Great St Helens double entrance

St Helens was badly damaged by the St Mary Axe bomb in 1992 and a second IRA bomb in Bishopsgate in 1993. The opportunity was taken to renovate the church and end some of the double nave confusion by raising floors and to tidy up the many monuments. The neo-Classical architect Quinlan Terry duly unified the different parts of the church and made it liturgically an evangelical preaching church, to the protests and consternation of many church conservationists; but Terry prevailed. A well-loved church had radically changed its character.

Great St Hlens after restoration

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Reaching Bishopsgate, it would be easy to walk past and not notice tiny St Ethelburga Bishopsgate. It is a curious survivor of the Great Fire and of the Blitz but it did not survive the 1993 IRA Bishopsgate bomb, which caused its complete collapse. Happily it was rebuilt. It is of humble ragstone and reading from the pavement up, David Piper, in his excellent Companion Guide to London, tells us: door late 14^th century: window 15^th: turret perhaps 18^th century but weather-vane 1671. It had a plain interior mainly by Sir Ninian Comper, with an old clock ticking peacefully away from the tumult outside. Since rebuilding, it now houses The Centre for Reconciliation and Peace.

St Ethelburga's Bishopsgate

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Further down Bishopsgate we come to the handsome brick church of St Botolph without Bishopsgate, founded in about 1212: the present building dates from 1725, the work of James Gold, an obscure pupil of George Dance. Perhaps because the architect is not one of the great names, this splendid church is not widely praised.

The interior is light and airy with fine galleries; the barrel vaulted roof is plastered in white and there are agreeable Victorian furnishings. The playwright Ben Jonson was buried and the poet John Keats baptised here. The Church is also regularly used by the Antiochian Orthodox Church whose devotees hail from Syria and Lebanon.

Beside the church is a charming 1840 red brick church hall, once a school, and there used to be 18^th century statues of charity children in the niches, currently removed.