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I have a fondness for this little church, which sits
pleasingly on the north side of Great Tower Street. The
paved area in front gives it rather a provincial air, as
if we were in the main shopping street of Norwich or
York, and the building itself similarly has no airs and
graces. Here, where London bends towards the grim old
tower, Wren turned disciplinarian and built one of the
simplest, starkest patterns of his career opined
Wayland Young in an uncharacteristically purple passage.
Yes, it is plain, and the interior is plain too, a simple
box-like nave with a north aisle beyond. Plain glass,
plain benches, a plain wooded sanctuary - even the
reredos is understated. And yet there is a pleasing
harmony here. I thought the church well-chosen by the
tramp snoring away on one of the back benches - there
were no discordant excitements here to keep him awake! But there is plenty to interest, too. At the
back are the churchwardens pews for St Margaret Pattens
and St Gabriel Fenchurch, and these are the only
surviving examples in the City. The beadle's pew survives
too, and there are hat pegs for gentlemen, and perhaps
all in all no other City church still has the calm and
simplicity of 18th Century London life before the
Victorian storm began. Mind you, those 18th Century
gentlemen might have raised an eyebrow at the succession
of young women carryng large exercise balls up the north
aisle on their way to a pilates class in the north
gallery, now a conference room. The late 17th Century
font is similar to that at St Margaret Lothbury, which
came originally from St Olave Jewry.
A patten is a kind of wooden shoe,
and a window of 2000 commemorates the Worshipful Company
of Pattenmakers. But in fact the dedication was probably
not a reference to pattenmakers at all, but to Ranulf
Peyton, a Canon of St Pauls who owned the land in this
parish.
Simon Knott, March 2022
location: Great Tower Street 4/038
status: guild church
access: open Monday to Friday
   
  
  
   
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