Category: Sculpture Page 8 of 36

In 1500 there were 15 churches in the City of London dedicated to a St Mary. It was by far the most popular dedication with the next most popular being All Hallows (8 churches) and St Michael (7 churches). This, of course, was helped by the fact that there are two St Marys – Mary the Virgin, the mother of Jesus and Mary Magdalene one of Jesus’s followers who was present at the crucifixion. But even if we count only the churches dedicated to the Virgin Mary, it is still the most popular dedication with a total of 13.

I’ve already written in some detail about the six Marys still in existence but for some reason I rather neglected paying serious attention to St Mary Aldermary – an omission I intend to put right in this week’s blog. Incidentally, the name ‘Aldermary’ possibly derives from ‘Older Mary’ meaning the oldest church in the City dedicated to her.

As every guide to the church will tell you – when you enter just look up!

The nave …

The south side aisle …

The north side aisle …

The fabulous plaster fan-vaulted ceiling is more reminiscent of a cathedral and St Mary’s is the only parish church in England known to have one.

It is unclear why Wren chose to rebuild the church (1679-82) in an uncharacteristically Gothic style. Funding came from a personal estate, so it may have been the desire of the executors, or possibly the will of parishoners. Whatever the cause, the fortunate result is arguably the most important late 17th century Gothic church in England.

A quirky feature of the church is the angle of the east wall which followed the line of a pre-1678 passage …

One of the the east windows by Lawrence Lee (1955) is ‘a fusion of sacred and secular with St Thomas, St John the Baptist and Madonna and Child above and panels depicting important episodes from the dramatic history of the church below. The gothic church tower powerfully depicted appears engulfed in the flames of the Great Fire of London of 1666’ …

In close up, Sir Christopher Wren kneels to present his plans for the new church …

The west window by John Crawford commemorates the defence of London against air attack in the 1939-45 War. It depicts the Risen Christ in Glory with the Hand of God the Father and the Holy Spirit in the form of a Dove. Above are the Instruments of the Passion, while below are the emblems of the four Evangelists. The lower lights show St Michael overcoming the Dragon, representing the force of good vanquishing evil, with St Peter (left) and St Paul (right). At the base is a panorama of London and at the top the arms of the various Services involved …

A blocked off window above the north door, dating from 1876, depicts the Transfiguration …

The pulpit is thought to have been carved in 1682 by Grinling Gibbons …

The organ was built by George England in 1791 …

This beautiful, rare wooden sword rest dates from 1682 …

You can read more about the fascinating history of sword rests here.

The font was a gift from a wealthy parishoner called Dutton Seaman in 1627. One commentator describes it as having been ‘designed with jacobean gusto’ …

There is a plaque to James Braidwood, who was married in the church in 1838. He was the first Superintendent of the London Fire Engine Establishment and formed the world’s first municipal fire brigade in Edinburgh. He died tragically whilst fighting the terrible Tooley Street Fire of 1861. You can read all about him and the fire in which he perished in my Tooley Street Fire blog …

René Baudouin was a Huguenot refugee from Tours in France. He established himself in Lombard Street, London, with a silk merchant Etienne Seignoret. The pair were successful but they were fined for continuing to trade with France during the Anglo-French war (1689-1697) …

There is also a memorial to the brilliant surgeon Percivall Pott who I wrote about in last week’s blog.

St Mary is the regimental church of the Royal Tank Regiment – ‘Once a Tankie always a Tankie’ …

The nearby old City church of St Antholin was demolished in 1875 and the parish merged with St Mary’s. A plaque on the wall outside memorialises this union …

If you entered St Mary’s from the west, the door casing you walked through came from St Antholin …

The best view of the church is from the south side of Queen Victoria Street …

The golden finials at the top of the tower are now, I’m told, made of fibreglass!

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Fun architecture in Eastcheap (and trying out the camera on my new phone!)

By The City Gent

On 28th December 2023

In Architecture, Commerce, Sculpture

Having got myself a new iPhone I thought I would give it a trial run in Eastcheap where there is some unusual architecture to explore.

This is what you see as you approach from the west …

And if you view from the east …

I thought it would be interesting to include these images to illustrate just how the Fenchurch Building a.k.a. the Walkie Talkie dominates the skyline here. It was amusing that, when the building was finished, it was discovered that the glass concentrated and reflected the sun’s rays in such a way that it was scorching cars parked in the street below. The structure was given a new nickname – the Walkie Scorchie.

The stars of the show at street level are definitely numbers 33-35. Designed by R L Roumieu and built 1868, today the facade is grade II* listed. The ‘masterpiece’ (as described by Architectural Historian; Pevsner) was made for Hill & Evans, vinegar-makers from Worcester …

Pevsner goes on to describe it as ‘one of the maddest displays in London of gabled Gothic’ and he quotes from Ian Nairn – architectural critic – who calls it ‘the scream that you wake on at the end of a nightmare’.

I love it!

Look at the wonderfully detailed brickwork …

There’s a medieval head wearing a coronet …

… and a boar crashing through the undergrowth. What’s that all about? …

The animal is a reference to The Boar’s Head Tavern in Eastcheap where Shakespeare set the meetings of Sir John Falstaff and Prince Hal in his Henry IV plays and the medieval head represents the Prince.

No. 25, by Bird & Walters (1892-93), was a former pub. The narrow and plainer building on the right was built in 1860 …

Another 1860 building is the eye-catching one on the corner. It was once the offices and warehouses for Messers Hunt & Crombie, spice merchants …

Just below the roof is a fabulous combo of dogs’ and boars’ heads along with lovely brickwork …

Walk around the corner to see London’s tiniest public sculpture. Thousands of people walk past it every day and have, I’m sure, no idea it is there.

Can you spot it …

It’s two mice eating a piece of cheese …

There are a number of theories as to its origin but nobody knows for sure.

Further east, on the opposite side of the road, are more Eastcheap animals, including the remains of a dead one.

Constructed between 1883 and 1885, the building at number 20 was once the headquarters of Peek Brothers & Co, dealers in tea, coffee and spices, whose trademark showed three camels bearing different shaped loads being led by a Bedouin Arab …

The firm was particularly well known for its ‘Camel’ brand of tea. When Sir Henry Peek (son of one of the original founders) commissioned this building he wanted the panel over the entrance to replicate the trademark, right down to the dried bones of the dead camel lying in the sand in the foreground.

The Peek Brothers letter heading/trademark – Copyright – British Overprint Society – Mark Matlach

He clearly wanted his prestigious building to be enhanced by a suitably eminent sculptor – preferably one with knowledge of camel anatomy.

The sculptor he picked, William Theed, was indeed an extraordinary choice for such a mundane task. Theed was a great favourite of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert and his work can be seen on the Albert Memorial where he sculpted the group Africa the central figure being, of course, a camel …

The Queen also liked and trusted him so much that she asked him to take her beloved Albert’s death mask when the Prince died tragically young in 1861.

Peeks carried on trading under various names until the 1970s. Another branch of the family ensures that the name lives on by way of the biscuit makers Peek Freans …

As is often the case, I am indebted to Katie Wignall, the Look up London blogger and Blue Badge Guide, for much of the background information on the architecture in today’s blog.

It just remains for me to wish you all a very happy and safe New Year and thank you very much for subscribing.

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Spooky special edition!

By The City Gent

On 2nd November 2023

In Architecture, Quirky, Religion, Sculpture

I know Halloween ended a few days ago but it did inspire me to look again at spooky aspects of the City and produce a special edition. I was also enthused by a quite extraordinary house I encountered in a trip to Hampstead which had totally embraced the Halloween spirit. Here’s a sample …

More later.

What better place to start in the City than Samuel Pepys’s ‘own church’, St Olave Hart Street.

It has a really gruesome but stunning churchyard entrance incorporating impaled skulls and crossed bones dated 11th April 1658. The Latin inscription, roughly translated, reads ‘Christ is life, death is my reward‘ and the central skull wears a victory wreath.

Charles Dickens called it ‘St Ghastly Grim’.

It’s even more disturbing becuse the banked-up surface of the churchyard is a reminder that it is still bloated with the bodies of plague victims, and gardeners still turn up bone fragments. Three hundred and sixty five were buried there including Mary Ramsay, who was widely blamed for bringing the disease to London. We know the number because their names were marked with a ‘p’ in the parish register.

Note how much higher the graveyard is than the floor at the church door.

The crypt of the ‘Journalists’ Church’, St Brides in Fleet Street, is home to a fascinating museum containing an extraordinary coffin …

Until well into the 18th century the only source of corpses for medical research was the public hangman and supply was never enough to satisfy demand. As a result, a market arose to satisfy the needs of medical students and doctors and this was filled by the activities of the so-called ‘resurrection men’ or ‘body snatchers’. Some churches built watchhouses for guards to protect the churchyard, but these were by no means always effective – earning between £8 and £14 a body, the snatchers had plenty of cash available for bribery purposes. A tempting advertisement …

The idea was not popular with the clergy and in 1820 the churchwardens at St Andrew’s Holborn refused churchyard burial to an iron coffin. The body was taken out and buried, which led to a law suit. The judgment was that such coffins could not be refused but, since they took so much longer than wooden ones to disintegrate, much higher fees could be charged. This no doubt contributed to the relatively short time iron coffining was used.

St Brides also contains a charnel house, only opened by special arrangement. As you walk around the crypt, bear in mind that there are quite a few old Londoners resting nearby …

The primary customers for fresh corpses were the trainee surgeons at St Bartholomew’s Hospital so it’s no surprise that the nearby church of St Sepulchre had its own watchhouse. Sadly this was destroyed in the Blitz but there is a charming replica that you can see today …

Just around the corner is the entrance to the church so do call in if you can and visit a grim reminder of the days of the notorious Newgate Gaol and public executions.

Carts carrying the condemned on their way to Tyburn would pause briefly at the church where prisoners would be presented with a nosegay. However, they would already have had an encounter with someone from the church the night before. In 1605, a wealthy merchant called Robert Dow made a bequest of £50 for a bellman from the church to stand outside the cells of the condemned at midnight, ring the bell, and chant as follows:

All you that in the condemned hole do lie, Prepare you, for tomorrow you shall die; Watch all and pray, the hour is drawing near, That you before the Almighty must appear; Examine well yourselves, in time repent, That you may not to eternal flames be sent: And when St. Sepulchre’s bell tomorrow tolls, The Lord above have mercy on your souls.

And you can still see the bell today, displayed in a glass case in the church …

About five minutes’ walk away is the beautiful church of St Bartholomew the Great inside which is what I think is one of the most disturbing sculptures in the City …

Entitled Exquisite Pain, as well as his skin St Bartholomew also holds a scalpel in one hand and a pair of scissors in the other. The second surprise, to me anyway, was that this work was by Damien Hirst, the modern artist known particularly for his spot paintings and the shark swimming in formaldehyde. St Bartholomew is the patron saint of Doctors and Surgeons and Hirst has said that this 2006 work ‘acts as a reminder that the strict demarcation between art, religion and science is a relatively recent development and that depictions of Saint Bartholomew were often used by medics to aid in anatomy studies’. He went on to say that the scissors were inspired by Tim Burton’s film ‘Edward Scissorhands’ (1990) to imply that ‘his exposure and pain is seemingly self- inflicted. It’s kind of beautiful yet tragic’. The work is on long-term loan from the artist …

There’s nothing like a nice relic – even if it’s not on open display.

This is St Ethelreda’s Roman Catholic church in Ely Place (a road strange in its own right since it is privately managed by its own body of commissioners and beadles) …

The building is one of only two surviving in London from the reign of Edward I and dates from between 1250 and 1290. It is dedicated to Aethelthryth or Etheldreda, the Anglo-Saxon saint who founded the monastery at Ely in 673. According to the story, sixteen years after she died of the plague her body was exhumed in 695 and was found to be pure and uncorrupted with even her clothes having miraculous properties. Although her body has been lost it is said that her uncorrupted hand still rests in a casket in this church.

Unfortunately, this reliquary is kept beside the high altar and I couldn’t gain access so we must make do with an online image …

Nevertheless, it wasn’t a wasted visit. The church is a fascinating place as can be seen from some of the images I did take …

So I shall be back.

And finally, the Hampstead house on Flask Walk that truly embraced the spirit of Halloween.

Disabling the burglar alarm …

Hilarious!

The gang’s all here …

Welcome!

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Walking the City of London

Category: Sculpture Page 8 of 36

St Mary Aldermary – the most spectacular of the ‘Marys’.

Fun architecture in Eastcheap (and trying out the camera on my new phone!)

Spooky special edition!