Church Heritage Record 623029

Externally the church is a rectangle with a square bell-tower set at a slight angle against the west wall. Internally, the galleried nave is four bays long with apses at each end, one for the sanctuary and one for the organ gallery. Behind both are contrived several small rooms and passages.

Strangely for a London church, the building history is obscure. Clarke records that a Faculty for rebuilding was given in 1751, but only £1,500 was spent at this time and before long the church was described in an Act of 1792 as having been a few years before "very antient and in an extremely decayed state" (Act 32 Ges. III c.xxxix), and further mentions that the work undertaken at this time cost £12,225, which sounds like a thorough rebuilding. The old church was demolished in 1789 but the old east wall was preserved and the new church, built in 1789-91, was erected under the supervision of Nathaniel Wright, District Surveyor for the north district of the City of London. 

In 1831 the old east front was taken down in order to widen the read, and a new front was built and encased in Roman cement with a simple temple-like facade by the builder John Ward and Son of Jewin Street. At this time John William Griffith of Clerkenwell was surveyor to the parish, and he may therefore have been responsible for the design of the east end since he is recorded as having enlarged and decorated the church. (Perhaps it is immaterial that the church was in fact made smaller at this time, or perhaps he was responsible for some of the arrangements at the west end). The church was redecorated and refitted by J. Blyth in 1874, restored in 1892 and again in 1953 after War Damage.

The north wall is faced with brick and has two rows of windows suggesting galleries within the lower with segmental heads and the upper with semi-circular heads and a plain stucco stringcourse linking the sills. The wall head is capped with plain stone copings and there is a doorway near the west end with a blind roundel above. The west wall of the church was formerly attached to a row of houses demolished in 1887 and is therefore unpierced by openings and without any regular shape, the tower standing at an angle and not in the centre of the wall. The tower is square, also of brick, and has a louvred opening to north and south and a blocked doorway. At the top is a curved lead roof from which rises a square timber cupola with weatherboarding on the lower part and louvred round-headed arches above. The cupola is finished by an ogee lead roof and a gilded weathervane. The south elevation of the church is a mirror-image of the north, with the addition of small porch for the western doorway. The large semi-circular windows which form a clerestory to the nave are not normally visible from the ground, and are therefore treated functionally rather than architecturally, the wall surface which they pierce being covered with sheets of copper.

The east front is the showpiece of the outside of the church, and is covered with stucco. The central feature is an aedicular composition of pairs of unfluted Ionic half-columns standing on a plinth and carrying a simple pediment within which is a circular clock face, black with gold Roman numerals. Below the pediment is a round-healed window consisting of a "Venetian" window with a semi-circular light above (cf. the east window of St. James, Clerkenwell, which Griffith doubtless knew well), and a keystone carved as a console bracket. Outside this pedimented section the wall is pierced by a pair of doorways with simple architraves on console brackets above and, over these, a pair of round-headed windows, each combination of doorway and window taken together under a tall recessed arch. The plane of the wall is simply rusticated with straight horizontal lines, with no verticals, which give light and shade to a composition scarcely a foot deep at any point. The stucco returns about three feet on the north and south walls before stopping abruptly.

The church should be entered by one or other of the doorways at the west end, both of which lead into a lobby stretching the width of the church, and there is a similar but smaller space at the east end, the reason being that although the church is virtually rectangular outside the interior is a rectangle with an apse at each end. The western ante-room is irregularly shaped with a square timber construction in the middle of the west wall (not, as it seems, the base of the tower since that is further west again). This is lit by a circular window of eight panes of glass surrounding a circular centre pane, and the stone floor retains its original chequers amongst the stone flags. There are no windows, and the lobby is lit by an oval dome not visible externally. On each side of the square room rise elegantly curved staircases to the galleries. First, however, these lead to a first floor landing above the lobby, which is one of the most interesting parts of the building. It is twice divided by railings hinged to serve as gates, and these seem intended to divide the charity children from the more distinguished inhabitants of the parish for on each side of the western apse of the nave are tiny square rooms approached from this landing. Each of these is only about six feet square, but they are said to have served as schoolrooms for the children.

The plan of the body of the church is symmetrical about both the east-west and the north-south axes, so that the two doors leading into the aisles at the west end and the two leading into the galleries above are matched by a similar set of four doors at the east end. These each lead into four small rooms, the lower door on the south giving access to a panelled vestry and its pair on the north to a small lobby. Above each of those is a small room. The most extraordinary feature of this part of the building is that the window seen externally is not the east window internally, but merely a source of light to illuminate the transparency which the latter contains. The resulting narrow space between the two, which reaches from the floor level to the roof of the church, has two narrow timber staircases for access to the upper two rooms and a timber gangway linking the two above the level of the windows, very narrow and provided with wooden banisters.

The design of the interior of the church evidently owes something to the younger George Dance's All Hallows at the other end of London Wall, built twenty-five years earlier. This is especially noticeable in the provision of semi-circular window at clerestory level and of an eastern apse.

The space is simple, a four-bay rectangle with shallow apses at each end and rows of piers down each side supporting galleries and an upper row of unfluted Corinthian columns supporting the roof. The colour scheme is of special interest since much of it appears to be original, and reflects a desire to conceal the fact that all the interior surfaces are plaster. The square panelled piers under the galleries are marbled in brown and buff, with a paler, more clearly veined surface being employed for the panels than for the surrounds, and this paler colour is also used for the marbling of the pillars above. Between the two however, is a stringcourse which encompasses the whole building at one level, along the gallery fronts and then across the front of the west gallery and round the eastern apse. This is decorated with a continuous pattern of S scrolls picked out in dull red against a dark brown background, and there is also a little gilding on the florets in each scroll. The captials of the Corinthian capitals are also partly gilded.

The ceilings under the galleries are flat, as are those above, the latter with half-capitals against the outer walls which support shallow beams decorated with guilloche marking the bays, these linking up with similar decoration on the underside of the cornice between the pillars. The cornice itself has several finely detailed orders with dentils, egg and-dart and other continuous motifs. The fillets dividing one bay of the curved vault from the next are the same as those on the soffit of this cornice, and the bays between have circles within square panels, the spandrels filled with foliage and flowers. The big ceiling bosses have flowers with hanging stamens and retain their gasoliers. The cornice continues round both apses, and above it both are coffered with octagonal panels each containing a floret.