St Mary Woolnoth
Encyclopedia
St. Mary Woolnoth is an Anglican church in the City of London
City of London
The City of London is a small area within Greater London, England. It is the historic core of London around which the modern conurbation grew and has held city status since time immemorial. The City’s boundaries have remained almost unchanged since the Middle Ages, and it is now only a tiny part of...

, designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor
Nicholas Hawksmoor
Nicholas Hawksmoor was a British architect born in Nottinghamshire, probably in East Drayton.-Life:Hawksmoor was born in Nottinghamshire in 1661, into a yeoman farming family, almost certainly in East Drayton, Nottinghamshire. On his death he was to leave property at nearby Ragnall, Dunham and a...

, located on the corner of Lombard Street
Lombard Street, London
Lombard Street is a street in the City of London.It runs from the corner of the Bank of England at its north-west end, where it meets a major junction including Poultry, King William Street, and Threadneedle Street, south-east to Gracechurch Street....

 and King William Street
King William Street (London)
King William Street is the name of a street in the City of London, England. It runs from a junction at the Bank of England, meeting Poultry, Lombard Street and Threadneedle Street, south-east, where it meets a junction with Gracechurch and Cannon Street. It continues south after this junction, and...

 near the Bank of England
Bank of England
The Bank of England is the central bank of the United Kingdom and the model on which most modern central banks have been based. Established in 1694, it is the second oldest central bank in the world...

.

Early history

The church's site has been used for worship for at least 2,000 years; traces of Roman
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....

 and pagan
Paganism
Paganism is a blanket term, typically used to refer to non-Abrahamic, indigenous polytheistic religious traditions....

 religious buildings have been discovered under the foundations of the present church, along with the remains of an Anglo-Saxon
Anglo-Saxons
Anglo-Saxon is a term used by historians to designate the Germanic tribes who invaded and settled the south and east of Great Britain beginning in the early 5th century AD, and the period from their creation of the English nation to the Norman conquest. The Anglo-Saxon Era denotes the period of...

 wooden structure. Its name is first recorded in 1191 as Wilnotmaricherche. It is believed that the name "Woolnoth" refers to a benefactor, possibly one Wulnoth de Walebrok who is known to have lived in the area earlier in the 12th century. Its full (and unusual) dedication is to St. Mary Woolnoth of the Nativity
Nativity of Jesus
The Nativity of Jesus, or simply The Nativity, refers to the accounts of the birth of Jesus in two of the Canonical gospels and in various apocryphal texts....

.

The present building is at least the third church on the site. The Norman
Normans
The Normans were the people who gave their name to Normandy, a region in northern France. They were descended from Norse Viking conquerors of the territory and the native population of Frankish and Gallo-Roman stock...

 church survived until 1445, when it was rebuilt, with a spire added in 1485. It was badly damaged in 1666 in the Great Fire of London
Great Fire of London
The Great Fire of London was a major conflagration that swept through the central parts of the English city of London, from Sunday, 2 September to Wednesday, 5 September 1666. The fire gutted the medieval City of London inside the old Roman City Wall...

 but was repaired by Sir Christopher Wren
Christopher Wren
Sir Christopher Wren FRS is one of the most highly acclaimed English architects in history.He used to be accorded responsibility for rebuilding 51 churches in the City of London after the Great Fire in 1666, including his masterpiece, St. Paul's Cathedral, on Ludgate Hill, completed in 1710...

. Two new bells (the treble and the tenor) were cast in 1670, and in 1672 the middle bell was cast. The patched-up structure proved unsafe, however, and had to be demolished in 1711.

Hawksmoor

The church was rebuilt by the Commission for Building Fifty New Churches
Commission for Building Fifty New Churches
The Commission for Building Fifty New Churches was an organisation set up by Act of Parliament in England in 1711, with the purpose of building fifty new churches for the rapidly growing conurbation of London...

, financed by the coal tax of 1711. The new church was completed in 1716, commissioned from Nicholas Hawksmoor
Nicholas Hawksmoor
Nicholas Hawksmoor was a British architect born in Nottinghamshire, probably in East Drayton.-Life:Hawksmoor was born in Nottinghamshire in 1661, into a yeoman farming family, almost certainly in East Drayton, Nottinghamshire. On his death he was to leave property at nearby Ragnall, Dunham and a...

, who had responded with one of his most distinctive and original designs. He benefited greatly from having an unusually open area in which to work. The old church had been hemmed in by shops and houses, like many other City churches, but these were demolished at the same time as the church. Hawksmoor was thus able to fully exploit the unobstructed front of the site.

The resultant church was something of an architectural statement on Hawksmoor's part. Its unusually imposing façade
Facade
A facade or façade is generally one exterior side of a building, usually, but not always, the front. The word comes from the French language, literally meaning "frontage" or "face"....

, in English Baroque
English Baroque
English Baroque is a term sometimes used to refer to the developments in English architecture that were parallel to the evolution of Baroque architecture in continental Europe between the Great Fire of London and the Treaty of Utrecht ....

 style, is dominated by two flat-topped turrets supported by columns of the Corinthian order
Corinthian order
The Corinthian order is one of the three principal classical orders of ancient Greek and Roman architecture. The other two are the Doric and Ionic. When classical architecture was revived during the Renaissance, two more orders were added to the canon, the Tuscan order and the Composite order...

, which are used throughout the church. The west side of the façade, facing Lombard Street, has distinctive recesses bearing an inset forward-curving pediment resting on skewed columns.

The interior of the church is surprisingly spacious, despite its relatively small size. The layout is typical Hawksmoor, forming a "cube within a cube" - a square enclosed by three rows of four columns which is itself enclosed by a wider square. It is dominated by a baroque baldaquin, modelled on that of Bernini in St. Peter's Basilica
St. Peter's Basilica
The Papal Basilica of Saint Peter , officially known in Italian as ' and commonly known as Saint Peter's Basilica, is a Late Renaissance church located within the Vatican City. Saint Peter's Basilica has the largest interior of any Christian church in the world...

 in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

.

Threatened demolition

The church underwent major changes in the late 19th century and the turn of the 20th century; it was proposed for demolition on several occasions but was saved each time. Its galleries were removed by William Butterfield
William Butterfield
William Butterfield was a Gothic Revival architect and associated with the Oxford Movement . He is noted for his use of polychromy-Biography:...

 in 1876, who thought they were unsafe, and a number of other significant (and not entirely successful) changes were made at the same time.

Between 1897 and 1900 the City & South London Railway
City & South London Railway
The City and South London Railway was the first deep-level underground "tube" railway in the world, and the first major railway to use electric traction...

 (C&SLR) built Bank tube station beneath the church. The C&SLR were given permission to demolish it, but public outcry forced them to reconsider: the company undertook to use only the subsoil instead. The crypt was sold to the railway and the bones were removed for reburial at Ilford
Ilford
Ilford is a large cosmopolitan town in East London, England and the administrative headquarters of the London Borough of Redbridge. It is located northeast of Charing Cross and is one of the major metropolitan centres identified in the London Plan. It forms a significant commercial and retail...

. The walls and internal columns of the church were then supported on steel girders while the lift shafts and staircase shaft for Bank station were built directly beneath the church floor. At this time, the bells were also rehung with new fittings. No cracks formed in the plasterwork, and no settlement of the structure occurred; the company later claimed that the edifice of the church was considerably stronger than before.

In 1952 St. Mary Woolnoth became a Guild
Guild
A guild is an association of craftsmen in a particular trade. The earliest types of guild were formed as confraternities of workers. They were organized in a manner something between a trade union, a cartel, and a secret society...

 church, and is currently used by London's German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

-speaking Swiss community. The church was designated a Grade I listed building on 4 January 1950.

Notable people associated with the church

  • Thomas Kyd
    Thomas Kyd
    Thomas Kyd was an English dramatist, the author of The Spanish Tragedy, and one of the most important figures in the development of Elizabethan drama....

    , Elizabethan dramatist, was baptized here; his father Francis was also a churchwarden
    Churchwarden
    A churchwarden is a lay official in a parish church or congregation of the Anglican Communion, usually working as a part-time volunteer. Holders of these positions are ex officio members of the parish board, usually called a vestry, parish council, parochial church council, or in the case of a...

    .
  • Josias Shute
    Josias Shute
    Josias Shute was an English churchman, for many years rector of St Mary Woolnoth in London, archdeacon of Colchester, and elected a member of the Westminster Assembly.-Life:...

     was rector here from 1611.
  • Ralph Robinson
    Ralph Robinson (clergyman)
    Ralph Robinson was an English clergyman of presbyterian views, arrested as implicated in the plot of Christopher Love to restore the Stuart monarchy.-Life:...

     was presbyterian minister here on the 1640s.
  • William Owtram
    William Owtram
    William Owtram D.D. was a clergyman who published notable theological works. He rose to lead the church of the House of Commons - St. Margaret's, Westminster.-Life:...

     was rector here.
  • Thomas Busby
    Thomas Busby (composer)
    Thomas Busby was an English musical composer. He was the son of a coach-painter. He was born at Westminster in December 1755.-Early life:...

     the composer was organist here from 1798.
  • John Newton
    John Newton
    John Henry Newton was a British sailor and Anglican clergyman. Starting his career on the sea at a young age, he became involved with the slave trade for a few years. After experiencing a religious conversion, he became a minister, hymn-writer, and later a prominent supporter of the abolition of...

    , evangelical, anti-slavery campaigner and hymnist, was incumbent here from 1780 to 1807.
  • William Wilberforce
    William Wilberforce
    William Wilberforce was a British politician, a philanthropist and a leader of the movement to abolish the slave trade. A native of Kingston upon Hull, Yorkshire, he began his political career in 1780, eventually becoming the independent Member of Parliament for Yorkshire...

    , anti-slavery campaigner, worshipped here.
  • Edward Lloyd
    Edward Lloyd (coffeehouse owner)
    Edward Lloyd ran the Lloyd's Coffee House in Lombard Street in the City of London which became a meeting place for merchants and shipowners. From the habit of their members to meet there, Lloyd's Coffee House spawned Lloyd's of London, Lloyd's Register, and Lloyd's List. There is no connection...

    , founder of Lloyd's of London
    Lloyd's of London
    Lloyd's, also known as Lloyd's of London, is a British insurance and reinsurance market. It serves as a partially mutualised marketplace where multiple financial backers, underwriters, or members, whether individuals or corporations, come together to pool and spread risk...

    , is memorialised here.
  • William Josiah Irons
    William Josiah Irons
    William Josiah Irons was a priest in the Church of England and a theological writer.-Life:Irons, born at Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire, September 12, 1812, was second son of the Rev. Joseph Irons , by his first wife, Mary Ann, daughter of William Broderick. His mother died in 1828...

     the theologian was rector here from 1872.
  • Sir William Phips
    William Phips
    Sir William Phips was a shipwright, ship's captain, treasure hunter, military leader, and the first royally-appointed governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay....

     was buried here.
  • Anne (Marbury) Hutchinson
    Anne Hutchinson
    Anne Hutchinson was one of the most prominent women in colonial America, noted for her strong religious convictions, and for her stand against the staunch religious orthodoxy of 17th century Massachusetts...

    , noted American colonial woman, married William Hutchinson here in 1612.

Literary reference

  • T. S. Eliot
    T. S. Eliot
    Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...

     refers to this church in a famous passage of his 1922 poem The Waste Land
    The Waste Land
    The Waste Land[A] is a 434-line[B] modernist poem by T. S. Eliot published in 1922. It has been called "one of the most important poems of the 20th century." Despite the poem's obscurity—its shifts between satire and prophecy, its abrupt and unannounced changes of speaker, location and time, its...

    , Part 1, 'The Burial of the Dead':


A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,

I had not thought death had undone so many.

Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,

And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.

Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,

To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours

With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.

There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying, "Stetson!

You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!

External links

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