So, where is your dream house, if money was no object? Is it one of the pencil-thin penthouses on Billionaires row in New York City? Is it a stately home somewhere in the home counties around London? A friend of mine always had his heart set on a traditional Japanese house in Kyoto and recently managed to build it from scratch. For me, it would be a 18 century townhouse in Central London. In fact, one of these houses pictured below, if I could convert it back into a dwelling. They are one of the very few remaining houses in the City from that period (or any other). Built in 1730 and perfectly proportioned, they also stand on the site of the lost church of St. Thomas Apostle.
A quick note for those who are unfamiliar with the UK’s capital. There are, in fact, two Londons: the City of London and Greater London. When we say “the City” we mean the old medieval walled city – the square mile – still run by its own Corporation. With no capital letter, the “city of London” or just “London” normally refers to Greater London. Have a look at the map below to explain why this is. In 1800, London was far smaller than today – comprising the ancient City and the developing West End in Mayfair. But the next hundred years saw dramatic change as the metropolis ballooned in the Victorian era. During this period the population inside the City fell from 128,000 to only 27,000, but London outside grew from 1 million to 4.4 million.
A number of factors drove this transformation. First, demand for office space in the City soared, as the growing British Empire made London the de-facto capital of the world. At the same time, the railway boom created a ring of terminal stations around the edges of the City: Waterloo, Blackfriars, Cannon Street, London Bridge, Fenchurch Street, Liverpool Street, Moorgate and Farringdon. Notice there is no “Grand Central” station in the City as these terminuses were all built by competing private companies. These new train stations made commuting easy, so people moved out to the cheaper and more spacious housing being built outside, leaving the City to become a conglomeration of offices. This conversion from housing to commercial real estate meant that an estimated 80% of buildings in the City were demolished and rebuilt in just a 50 year period (1850 – 1900). Hence why I treasure the two town houses on the former site of St Thomas Apostle. But also, if you are startled by the new office towers reshaping the City’s skyline, bear in mind they are just continuing a Victorian tradition.
This was also the period of the Union of Benefices Act. Once the parishioners had fled to the suburbs, the City was ‘over churched’ and the rest of London ‘under churched’ if you will forgive that ugly expression. Of the original 108 churches in the medieval City, 87 were lost in the Great Fire of 1666. Of these, 34 were never rebuilt and 53 were redesigned and constructed by Wren. So, at the beginning of the Victorian era, there were 74 of these ancient parish churches still in the City. Under the Union of Benefices Act, 26 of these churches were demolished and the sites sold to finance new churches in the rest of London. After nine more churches were lost in the Blitz of WWII, we are left with only 39 City churches today.
The destruction of three quarters of the City in the Great Fire created an opportunity for redesigning the layout of the capital. Hollar’s “Before and After” panoramas show the extent of the destruction. You can see St. Thomas Apostle there in the center, and how little was left after the conflagration. Plans for a remodeling of the City’s streets were never implemented, partly because of strong local resistance by individual shop owners and citizens. Wren himself put forward a logical grid-like scheme for new City thoroughfares, which would have replaced the old tangle of medieval lanes. In the end, only one new street was created after the Fire. This one street, leading from the Thames to the Guildhall in more or less a straight line, was named in two parts – Queen Street and King Street. In 1850, with no residents to complain and plenty of commercially driven corporate interests, the Victorians could do what Wren could not, and several new streets were laid out.
This map shows the new streets superimposed on Leake’s 1667 map of the devastation caused by the Great Fire. On Leake’s map, look in the top left and right corners where you can see some densely packed houses that were untouched by the fire. But the whole of the center part of the city is blank, showing only the streets and the sites of the ruined churches. St Thomas Apostle is number 41 – you can see Queen Street running straight through the site. The Victorians added three new streets. The first was King William Street in 1830 after the rebuilding of London Bridge which created a direct route from the bridge to Bank. Then in 1845 Cannon Street was extended past Walbrook to create a straight line through to St Paul’s Cathedral. Finally in 1870, the curving Queen Victoria Street was created to link Blackfriars with Bank. At the same time, beneath the street were built sewers, gas lines and part of the District Line tube. There is a chance for a joke here about piping filth, but I’m not going to make it.
Now look at that central triangle, created by the new streets chopping through the medieval ones. You can see the results more clearly here on this Ordinance Survey map from 1900. Rather than simplifying things, the new streets have made the area far more confused. The site of St. Thomas Apostle, shown as a red circle, is surrounded by little triangular zones created by the intersection of new diagonals on an older grid – what a mess! The foundations of the lost church are somewhere beneath the street.
The earliest mention in historical records of the church is in 1170, saying a grant of the church was made to Stephen the priest and Henry the clerk. It was restored and rebuilt in 1371 by John Barnes, the Mayor, and further repaired and beautified in 1630. We know what the church looked like because it appears in the Wyngaerde Panorama of 1543 and also the Agas map of 1560 (see top of this post).
When it was destroyed in the Great Fire in 1666, the parish was united to St. Mary Aldermary which stood nearby as you can see in the parish map shown. Even though the building has disappeared, there are plenty of physical reminders of this lost church. A blue plaque marks the site, shown in the photo before. There is also a stone tablet on the site that reads:
One foot from the face of this stone is the extent of ground belonging to the parish of St Thomas Apostle – John Cockell & George Cook Churchwardens MDCCCXIV – (1814)
If you walk round the corner down College Hill, opposite the Indian restaurant you will find a parish boundary marker showing the division between St. Thomas Apostle and St Michael Paternoster. If you go inside St Mary Aldermary, there is a window showing Saint Thomas and John the Baptist. The lost church of John the Baptist on Walbrook was also united with St Mary Aldermary. You will also find several plaques on the walls mentioning St. Thomas Apostle. There is also a memorial on the wall of St Mary Woolnoth mentioning the church.
The Wikipedia page for St Thomas Apostle is here and the parish clerks page is here