Church Heritage Record 623030

The body of the church is octagonal, with eight recesses alternately rectangular and semi-octagonal round the edge. Towards the street projects the tower, capped by an octagonal lantern, and flanked by square lobbies containing staircases. To the north is a small doorway giving on to the passage leading to Clifford's Inn and to the south similar doorway communicates with the vestry and adjoining buildings.

The church replaces a mediaeval and Georgian building which had become completely derelict (designs for its reconstruction having been drawn up by George Dance in 1751 but never implemented), and which was demolished in 1829. 

The new church was designed by John Shaw (1776-1832), who had been appointed Surveyor to Christ's Hospital in 1816, and who was a member of the Architects' Club, Fellow of the Royal and Linnean Societies, of the Society of Antiquaries and of the Institute of British Architects. His additions to Christ's Hospital, including the Great Hall, wore similar in style to this church, but all were demolished in 1902; the bulk of his commissions seem to have been houses, villas and lodges.

An Act of Parliament was obtained in June 1829 for the purpose of taking down the old church and are building a new one. Trustees were appointed from the parish who were empowered to erect a new church with seating for 800 (200 to be free) with other parochial buildings. All the monuments, gravestones and monumental inscriptions were to be set up in the new church, which was built some thirty feet north of its predecessor, on the old burial ground, for the purpose of widening the street.

The foundation stone of the new church was laid on 31st July 1831 and the exterior was completed on 18th July in the following year. Twelve days later, John Shaw died suddenly at Ramsgate and the work was completed by his son of the same name. The church was consecrated on 31st January 1833.

The tower is both prominant and remarkable; with its ashlar facing of yellow-grey Ketton stone, it was obviously the only part of the exterior which was meant to be seen. It is divided into four unequal stages by stringcourses which bear an approximate relationship to the four floor levels inside, and on the uppermost stage stands an open octagonal lantern. The ground floor forms the porch of the church, and has a large doorway surmounted by an ogee crocketted canopy terminating in a finial, on each side of which are ved achievements of arms in square recesses, one for George IV and one for the City of London. Separating this floor from the next is a frieze of shields (uncarved) within cusped panels. The second stage, which forms the ringing chamboer, has merely a narrow lancet in each face and the third stage, which formerly housed the clock, has only a clock face within a square frame set diamond-wise in three walls and a door to the roof of the church in the fourth. The uppermost stage has a large three-light window in each wall which may be distantly inspired by the parallel placing of a similar is feature in the tower of Boston parish church. At this level the slender diagonal buttresses become elegant attenuated pinnacles with crocketted finials. These, together with large projecting corbols carved as lively heads, help to ease the transition from square to octagon which is achieved by broaches hidden behind big corner pinnacles.

The rest of the exterior is very plain; on each side of the towor are low square lobbies which house stone staircases. That on the right now forms a substantial plinth for one of the church's most decorative treasures, the clock and its attendant figures. There seems to have been a musical clock in this part of London since at least 1478, and the present one was originally erected on the roof of the south aisle of the old church, probably as a thank-offering for the building's escape from the Great Fire. It was provided in 1671 by Mr. Harris of Water Lane at a cost of £35 and the old clock. In 1829 when the old church was demolished it was bought by the Marquis of Hertford and set up at his villa (appropriately named "St. Dunstans") in Regent's Park. In 1935 Lord Rothermere purchased the clock and its figures and presented them to the church, meeting also the cost of their restoration. The clock itself is circular and projects on a bracket over the pavement; it has been somewhat altered since it was made. Behind it is an Ionic temple housing two wooden figures of "savages" in lion skins who, upon the quarters and hours, strike two bells with knotty clubs.

The statue of queen Elizabeth I over the door to the building on the right of the church came, together with figures (preserved in the vestry) of the mythical King Lud and his sons Androgeus and Theomantius, from the west front of Ludgate where they had been placed in 1586; they were given to the church by Sir Francis Gosling in 1760 when Ludgate was demolished. 

The porch at the foot of the tower is fan-vaulted in stone, the fans not decorated with tracery as in most late medieval examples, but simply outlined by a few moulded ribs. In the centre of the ceiling is a circular bellway, and the fans are supported at the corners of the space by leafy corbels. Above the inner door to the church is a circular marble tablet flanked by large angels carved in relief which gives, in Gothic lettering, the information about the church's foundation stone, the architect's date of death and the date of consecration. Below this, the door opens into a small lobby divided from the body of the church by a glazed screen behind the Churchwarden's pews. To left and right double doors give access to the lobbies which lead to the west gallery where the organ stands. Blocked doorways at the upper level are former entrances to galleries, now removed, in other parts of the building. The door on the right also gives access to a stair descending to the crypt; this is a n large rectangular space vaulted in brick with various burial vaults.

The body of the church is a large and airy octagon which benefits greatly from the clerestory windows, the other windows being rather obscured by buildings close at hand. The central space is surrounded by eight wide arches opening into recesses which are alternately rectangular and semi octagonal. The arches are carried on moulded responds with attached shafts and the recesses are vaulted in alternating ways, the rectangular with the pointed tunnel vaults and the semi-octagonal with rib vaults carried on shafts attached to the walls which rest on big corbels carved as busts of angels.

The floor is paved with stone flags, and the seating is arranged in two symmetrical blocks of pews whose outer edges follow the shape of the octagon and box pews in the north and south transeptal recesses. The eastern recess is the chancel and is lit by a four-light traceried window of Perpendicular character. The west bay which forms the entrance has the only remaining sellery upon which stands the contemporary organ case. Of the other four bays, the south-west forms the baptistery and is paved with late-Victorian black and white tesserae and the north-west forms a chapel for the reservation of the sacrament, similarly paved.

The construction of an octagon with projecting recesses creates tha problem of triangular spaces between one recess and the next, and these are ventilated by quatrefoils pierced in the spandrelsof the eight arches round the octagon, as well as by small trefoiled lancet windows in the side walls of each recess.