Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
THE CITY'S CHURCHES
The City of London is crowded with
churches
, the majority of them built or rebuilt by
Christopher Wren after the Great Fire. Prompted by the decline in the City's population, the
Victorians demolished a fair few, but over forty remain intact. The
opening times
given in the
text should be taken with a pinch of salt, since most rely on volunteers to keep their doors
open. As a general rule, weekday lunchtimes are the best time to visit, since many City
churches put on free lunchtime concerts. Below is a list of the six most interesting:
St Bartholomew-the-Great
Cloth Fair.
This is the
oldest surviving pre-Fire church in the City and by far
the most atmospheric. It was also the first church in the
country to charge an entrance fee. See p.167.
St Mary Abchurch
Abchurch Lane.
Uniquely for
Wren's City churches, the interior features a huge,
painted, domed ceiling, plus the only authenticated
Gibbons reredos. See p.174.
St Mary Aldermary
Bow Lane/Queen Victoria St.
Wren's most successful stab at Gothic, with fan vaulting
in the aisles and a panelled ceiling in the nave. See p.164.
St Mary Woolnoth
King William St.
Hawksmoor's
only City church, sporting an unusually broad, bulky
tower and a Baroque clerestory that floods the church
with light from its semicircular windows. See p.173.
St Olave
Hart Street.
Built in the fifteenth century,
and one of the few pre-Fire Gothic churches in the City.
See p.179.
St Stephen Walbrook
Walbrook.
Wren's dress
rehearsal for St Paul's, with a wonderful central dome
and plenty of original woodcarving. See p.173.
11
cathedral was o
cially completed in 1710 under Queen Anne, whose statue stands
below the steps. The cathedral achieved
iconic status during the
Blitz
, when it stood
defiantly unscathed amid the carnage (as in the famous wartime propaganda photo),
and a monument to the south of the cathedral commemorates both the
St Paul's Watch
-volunteers who patrolled the cathedral roof every night to combat the incendiary
bombs - and all those firefighters who have died since while carrying out their duties.
INFORMATION AND TOURS
Entry
Admission charges are nothing new at St Paul's -
they were first introduced in 1709, before the cathedral
was even finished. Once inside, pick up a free plan, and
simply ask the vergers if you're having trouble locating a
particular monument; alternatively, multimedia guides are
available free of charge.
Tours
Introductory talks run regularly throughout
the day, and there are longer guided tours (1hr 30min)
that allow you access to one or two areas off limits to the
public, setting off at 10.45am, 11.15am, 1.30pm and 2pm.
If you're in a group of five or more, you can also pay an
extra £8 each to go on a full-on behind-the-scenes
triforium tour (Mon & Tues 11.30am & 2pm, Fri 2pm; book
in advance on
T
020 7246 8357).
Services
It's worth attending one of the cathedral's
services, if only to hear the choir, who perform during most
evensongs (Mon-Sat 5pm), and on Sundays at 10.15am,
11.30am and 3.15pm. Strictly speaking, on Sundays
St Paul's is only open for services and consequently there's
no admission charge. However, in between services, you're
free to wander round the cathedral and crypt (though not
the galleries).
The interior
Queen Victoria thought the
nave
“dirty, dark and undevotional”, though since the
destruction of the stained glass in the Blitz, it is once again light and airy, as Wren
intended. Burials are confined to the crypt, and memorials were only permitted after
1790 when overcrowding at Westminster Abbey had become intolerable. Unfortunately,
what followed was a series of overblown funerary monuments to the military heroes of
the Napoleonic Wars. Some are simply ludicrous, like the virtually naked statue of
Captain Burges, in the south aisle, holding hands with an angel over a naval cannon;
others are more offensive, such as the monument to Thomas Fanshaw Middleton, first
Protestant Bishop of India, depicted baptizing “heathen” locals. The best of the bunch
are Flaxman's
Nelson
memorial, in the south transept, with its seasick lion, and, in the
north aisle, the bombastic bronze and marble monument - the cathedral's largest - to
ST PAUL'S CATHEDRAL >
