This lost church stood on the north side of Maiden Lane at the junction with Noble street. It is one of the three lost churches in the City that were dedicated to St John. There is some disagreement over the origin of the name ‘Zachary’. The priest Zachariah is venerated in both Christianity and Islam as the father of John The Baptist. So some believe the name ‘St John Zachary’ is just a shortened form of ‘St John, son of St Zachary’ . However, a 12th century manuscript states that the canons of St Pauls gave the church to “a monk called Zacharie that he may visit the church regularly”. So the church may be named after him.
Whatever the origin of the name – the first mention in the historical record is in 1181 and the spelling varies over the centuries. It is sometimes ‘St John Zachari’ or ‘St John de Sacr’ or just ‘St John Sacre’. We know what it looked like from the Agas map of 1560. The Lord Mayor of London Sir Nicholas Twiford was buried there with his wife in 1390 and he gave a bequest for its repair and improvement. Another notable figure was its vicar in 1424, William Byngham – the founder of England’s first teacher training college. It seems to have been a fairly prominent church. John Stow in his Survey of London, published in 1598, gave it quite an extensive write-up saying the following:
“Then is Engain lane, or Mayden lane, and at the north-west corner thereof the parish church of St. John Zachary; a fair church, with the monuments well preserved, of Thomas Lichfield, who founded a chantry there in the 14th of Edward II.; of Sir Nicholas Twiford, goldsmith, mayor 1388, and Dame Margery his wife, of whose goods the church was made and new built, with a tomb for them, and others of their race, 1390; Drugo Barentine, mayor 1398; he gave fair lands to the Goldsmiths; he dwelt right against the Goldsmiths’ hall; between the which hall and his dwelling house he built a gallery thwarting the street, whereby he might go from one to the other; he was buried in this church, and Christian his wife, 1427; John Adis, goldsmith, 1400, and Margaret his wife; John Francis, goldsmith, mayor 1400, and Elizabeth his wife, 1450; I. Sutton, goldsmith, one of the sheriffs 1413; Bartholomew Seman, goldbeater, master of the king’s mints within the Tower of London and the town of Calice, 1430;[228], John Hewet, esquire, 1500; William Breakespere, goldsmith, 1461; Christopher Eliot, goldsmith, 1505; Bartholomew Reade, goldsmith, mayor 1502, was buried in the Charterhouse, and gave to this, his parish church, one hundred pounds; his wife was buried here with a fair monument, her picture in habit of a widow; Thomas Keyton Lorimar, 1522; William Potken, esquire, 1537; John Cornish, with an epitaph, 1470; Robert Fenruther, goldsmith, one of the sheriffs in the year 1512.”
The church underwent a further series of repairs between 1616 and 1631 but they all came to naught because the church was destroyed in 1666 in the Great Fire of London. It was decided not to rebuild the church and the parish was combined with the next door church of St Anne & St Agnes.
The building may have disappeared but the site of the church is still visible today as a small garden marked with a blue plaque. The sunken level of the garden corresponds to the floor level of the lost church. It was constructed in 1941 by fire watchers after extensive damage to the area in the Blitz and won a Gardener’s Company award for “Best Garden on a Blitzed Site” in 1950. The garden has been refurbished twice since then – in 1960 by Sir Peter Shepherd and in 1995 by Anne Jennings. The site is associated with many of the City of London Guilds, most notably the Goldsmiths Company and the Wax Chandlers (both of whose Halls are opposite). In addition the iron entrance archway was commissioned by the Blacksmiths Company and the central fountain by the Construction Company. There is a Portland stone statue called “The Three Printers” in one corner of the garden which came from the old Westminster Press Group’s headquarters in Fleet Street. If you are sharp eyed enough, you may spot this churchyard in David Fincher’s movie ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ which used this as a location.
The wikipedia site for St John Zachary is here
