The defence of London... the forces of Good vanquishing Evil

It was a mild day and I decided to walk from Old Street into the City. Because I had a couple of hours to spare I decided to look at three churches designed by Sir Christopher Wren. First to St Margaret Lothbury opposite the Bank of England. It consisted of a cube with an adjoining tower surmounted by an obelisk steeple. Inside was an exquisite interior - white walls, heraldic glass in the windows, amazing woodwork that was highly ornate and baroque. As if to underline the overall design, much use had been made of gold highlights, especially impressive on the capitals of the Corinthian columns. Iron sword rests (only used during visits by the Lord Mayor) were topped by gilded crowns. In the south aisle the reredos consisted of an 1891 painting of the Annunciation. Above it was the sacred tetragrammaton (Hebrew consonants of the Divine Name). All around the church, studding the walls like barnacles on the underside of a ship, were grimy marble tablets commemorating a bewildering number of dead worthies - lawyers, doctors, bankers, traders and the like. For a moment I felt I was surrounded by the numberless ancestors of London’s past.

Down past the Mansion House to St Mary Le Bow. Again it was of classic proportions, the spire one of Wren’s finest. Inside it was even more ornate than St Margaret Lothbury, but everything was new (the church had been gutted in a German air-raid on 11th May 1941). I particularly liked the chapel of the Blessed Sacrament where the altar was encased in a monstrance inspired by a Wren design. Displays of white lilies, more gilded Corinthian capitals, more heraldry (including a banner of the Australian Order). Woodwork carved in Oberammergau. The bells of the church are important as they define a true Londoner - to qualify you have to be born within the sound of Bow bells. The bells are commemorated in the children’s rhyme Oranges and Lemons. Recordings of Bow bells were broadcast by the BBC to Occupied Europe during the Second World War as a symbol of freedom.

A short walk to St Mary Aldermary, the only church Wren built in the gothic style. Inside it was as if I was in a parish church in the country, so potent was the gothic aura, so authentic the gothic atmosphere. An elderly man showed me round. The church was one of only two in the City to escape German bombing in the Second World War (although all the stained glass windows had been shattered). There was an impressive new stained glass window which portrayed the defence of London during the 1939-45 war, including a panorama of the City and the figure of St Michael overcoming the dragon (representing the forces of Good vanquishing Evil).




















St Augustine with St Faith, Watling Street (near St Pauls tube station). Only the tower of this Wren church survived bombing in the Second World War. It is now covered in scaffolding and tarpaulins like a building wrapped by Christo and Jeanne-Claude.