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An early foundation, probably a Saxon church set in the
former forum of the Roman Londinium. The medieval church
was larger than today's, an important church with
charitable foundations including a library and a school
by the 15th Century. As Wayland Young observes, chantries
were many and rich. All were dispersed at the
Reformation. The church was destroyed in the Great Fire,
and rebuilt by Wren in the early 1680s. This is a church
worth viewing from different aspects. From Cornhill it is
a reminder of what many City churches were once like,
with buildings crowding all around and shopfronts
flanking the porch. Everybody loves the devil perched on
an adjacent gable. The story goes that the owner was
forced to pull down an earlier building because he had
unwittingly encroached on church land. From Gracechurch
Street the tower and spire can be seen, while from the
south the aspect is much more intimate across a small
garden.As with its near
neighbour St Michael Cornhill, a surprising amount of the
19th Century restoration survives here thanks to these
tightly-packed buildings at the east end of Cornhill
surviving the Blitz. However, the nave glass by Hugh
Easton and the AK Nicholson studio is all 20th Century
and variable according to taste. Most moving is a small
memorial to seven children killed in a house fire in
1782. It remembers James, Mary, Charles, Harriet,
George, John, Elizabeth, the whole offspring of James and
Mary Woodmason, in the same awful moment on the 18 Jan
1782 translated by sudden and irresistible flames in the
late mansion of their sorrowing parents from the sleep of
innocence to eternal bliss. Their remains collected from
the ruins are here combined. A sympathysing friend of the
bereaved parents, their comanion through the night of 18
of Jan in a scene of distress beyond the powers of
language, perhaps of imagination, devotes this
spontaneous tribute of the feeling's of his mind to the
memory of innocence. JHC. The children appear as a
range of cherubs above the inscription.
Simon Knott, March 2022
location: Cornhill 3/057
status: part of the St Helen Bishopsgate empire
access: open Tuesdays in the afternoon.
  
 
 
   
  
  
 
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