St Mary at Hill, Lovat Lane, London
I applied to stand by intersecting lanes
Among the silent workplaces, and wait,
Picking which bell to abide by not a peal,
For that was much too nicely-known, I liked things dim –
A solitary bell would tinkle down a lane:
My echoing measures would track the supply of audio –
A cassocked verger, bell-rope in his fingers,
Referred to as me to substantial box pews, to cedar wooden
And so at the time much more, as for 3 hundred years,
This carven wooden, these gray memorial’d walls
Heard after again the Guide of Common Prayer,
While somewhere at the again the verger, now
Turned Parish Clerk, would rumble out “Amen”.
John Betjeman, from Summoned by Bells
The city context initial, for this church is set as several Town churches should have been in the decades prior to the Blitz. From the west, the tower stands in the slow curve of Lovat Lane, primary from Cheapside down to Eliot’s erstwhile fishmen of Billingsgate lounging at noon. It is effortless to envision the precocious Betjeman wandering down the lane as a schoolboy, summoned by the evensong bells to the twilit delights of the Reserve of Prevalent Prayer. The east finish of the church is flush in the avenue line of the road which can take its title from the church, and the name itself is writ big down below the east window. A doorway under a portico with its cranium and crossed bones prospects by way of to the tiny burial floor.
St Mary at Hill was at the time a single of the least spoiled of the Metropolis church buildings, and the only one to survive the Blitz with a entire set of box pews intact. Worship right here was a previous flavor of how the Metropolis churches ended up ahead of the German bombs modified the Town eternally. And then in 1988 there was an arson attack which wrecked the ceiling. The furnishings generally survived, and had been placed in store even though the roof and ceiling have been restored. In 1998, Simon Bradley in the revised Pevsner lamented that most of the noteworthy woodwork remains in shop. Its comprehensive restoration is an urgent precedence. Almost twenty several years on this still has not took place, and you action into a good open house which feels a great deal more substantial than it truly is. The missing furnishings had been all of a piece, courting from Wren’s rebuilding of 1670-74, refurbished and additional to in 1848 by W Gibbs Rogers who Pevsner complimented as his function could barely be distinguished from the initial. I have no concept why they have not been returned. Does someone know? Most likely they will contact me and inform me.
The west screen is even now in situ, there are some good glass roundels which try to remember the other church buildings which the moment stood in the modern parish, and the excellent chandelier has no distractions from its glory. But usually this is an empty shell, the skeleton of a church ready for its flesh, blood and soul to be restored to it.
(c) Simon Knott, December 2015
Posted by Simon Knott on 2012-03-28 20:09:48
Tagged: , St Mary , Hill , City of London , London , Square Mile , church , church buildings , town church buildings , Bigger London , Wren , Hawksmoor
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