It was in December 2003, on a cold but thankfully dry day, that I adjourned to the London Guildhall and spent a couple of hours browsing its fascinating Library with my companion, top TTFF mover and shaker Pete G.
Lunch was a visit to a sandwich shop just across the road, where a ciabatta and a fruit salad were purchased, and I decided where we should sit and eat our grub. A spot to the west of the Guildhall, the small garden that holds the remains of St Mary Aldermanbury.
Ruined churches are not unusual in the City, the Blitz saw to that, but unlike the nearby St Albans Wood Street and other notables such as Christ Church Newgate Street and St-Dunstan-In-The-East, St Mary lacks a dominating tower or standing exterior walls.In fact, it is quite the opposite – the remains are sunken in comparison to the surrounding landscaped churchyard. Low stonework, only a few courses high, trace the shape of the building and the bases of the columns that once supported the roof can be seen. One would be forgiven for feeling a little sadness at the loss of what was a lovely Wren church, but the fact is that St Mary has not been lost. It has simply been moved!
Of which more later, for St Mary’s history goes back long before the enemy aircraft changed its destiny. Stow provided an explanation for the name of the street: ‘this street took the name of Alderman’s bury, or court… but now called the Guildhall; which hall of old time stood on the east side of the same street… I myself have seen the ruins of the old hall in Aldermanbury Street’.
He described the pre-Great Fire church as fair, with a cloister in which was displayed a ‘shankbone’ of a man, some twentyeight inches in length. Among the burials he lists is that of Dame Mary Gresham, wife to the important City figure Sir John, and mother of the even more important Sir Thomas.
Other than Stow’s description, little seems to be known of the medieval church, which was one of many victims of the Great Fire. Two of Shakespeare’s fellow actors, John Heminge and Henry Condell, lived in the parish and were buried in the churchyard. Their names may be unfamiliar to most but, in fact, it is due to the diligent efforts of these two that English Literature is the most respected in the world for, without them, the name of Shakespeare would hardly be known.
A bust of the Bard is displayed in the churchyard, and an inscription on the plinth describes the achievement of his two friends and fellow actors: ‘To the memory of John Heminge and Henry Condell, fellow actors and personal friends of Shakespeare. They lived many years in this parish and are buried here. To their disinterested affection the world owes all that it calls Shakespeare. They alone collected his dramatic writings, regardless of pecuniary cost, and without the hope of any profit gave them to the world. They thus merited the gratitude of mankind.’
These publishings are known as the First Folio and are probably the most influential works in literature. As a fan of Shakespeare, I can only second the sentiments of the inscription.
Wren designed the church that rose from the ashes of the Great Fire and, when the building was still young, it hosted another burial – this one done quietly and with a minimum of fanfare, for the deceased in question was anything but popular.
Judge George Jeffries, known to history as the Hanging Judge, rose to prominence as a crony of the Duke of York, later James II. Following the failed uprising that culminated in the Battle of Sedgemoor in 1685, Jeffries was sent to the West Country to deal with the captured rebels. His trials, known as the Bloody Assizes, are still spoken of with a sense of horror today. Somewhere in the number of three hundred were hanged, drawn and quartered, and many more were transported. Mercy was not a word that Jeffries included in his thinking.
Naturally, this made him tremendously unpopular with the common folk, but his friendship with James saw his power continuing to grow, and his attaining the position of Lord Chancellor All this ended suddenly with the Glorious Revolution. William and Mary landed, James fled to France, and Jeffries – believing his life in danger of lynch mob justice ( a probably correct suspicion), sought sanctuary in the Tower of London. He never left it alive. Placed under arrest and charged with treason, he died unlamented in 1689. Three years later, he was moved from his grave in the Tower and quietly dumped in St Mary. Today, no monument marks his presence.
Wren’s church was burned out in the Blitz and, after the War finished, it was one of the churches that received a new lease of life. However, it was not rebuilt on the site. Its stones were labelled in strict order, then packed up and exported to Missouri!
In 1946, Winston Churchill had visited the States and made a speech at Westminster College in Fulton. It was decided to rebuild the church of St Mary on the campus as a Churchill memorial. The rebuilding took place under the care of architect
Eris Lytle, who actually visited London to study Wren’s work for himself before refitting the interior of the church.
St Mary Aldermanbury survives today, a Wren church on a college campus in the USA. Its exterior, of 7,000 Portland stones, looks much the same as it did when it occupied its site near the London Guildhall. Its interior is bright and welcoming – Lytle obviously appreciated Wren’s love of sun-filled churches with clear glass. The site in London that it occupied for centuries is a garden, easily missed as it sits below the level of the Guildhall, and looking at first glance like it has been excavated out of the earth by archaeologists. I sat there on a cold December afternoon and found amusement in the fact that Pete, the TTFF resident expert on Dorchester, sat eating a ciabatta above the bones of Dorset’s most infamous scourge, and I looked across at the bust of the Bard and gave quiet thanks, as I always do when I pass this spot, to his friends John and Henry.
Later, Pete and I visited St Mary le Bow, but that’s a different story!
Author Mark McManus
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