Churches - Archive Articles

A hidden oasis of calm next to Marble Arch

A quiet haven of peace sits on blood-stained land opposite Hyde Park. A living memorial to those who died for their beliefs in more troubled times.

Simon Jenkins on the English Church

I found a rather curious little series on Channel 4 a few weeks ago and recently finished watching the last of the six half-hour episodes.

Mayfair’s masterpiece of the Gothic Revival

Nestled in amongst the back streets of posh Mayfair you can find one of London's greatest Gothic Revival churches.

A look at the secular enclave within Westminster Abbey

Westminster Abbey, that mighty bastion of religion has an alien invader amongst its midst, a couple of buildings that were nominally religious, but have spent the past 800 years performing more secular duties.

King’s College Hospital’s Centenary Celebrations

It is one hundred years since an old hospital in the City of London moved away from its traditional home to the outskirts of the city, in what was at the time the small towns around Denmark Hill.

A rare oasis of calm in Camden Town

Camden town, that bustling heart of youth and arts has a seemingly rather overlooked oasis of peace and calm - sitting right next to the huge Sainsburys.

A look around St Mary-at-Finchley Church

A short walk from Finchley Central tube station can be found the area's oldest church - a site of Christian worship that can be reliably dated back at least 800 years.

A look around St Pancras Old Church

Behind St Pancras station sits an old church. It only became an old church when a new church was built nearby, and while considered to be very old, it is actually fairly new, but on the site that is quite old, but probably not as old as some people claim.

The docklands church built from bits of Old London Bridge

Around 160 years ago, a gleaming white Christian edifice was erected at the southernmost end of the Isle of Dogs that is rumoured to include remains of the old London Bridge in its structure.

The gothic masterpiece concealed in Marylebone

Squashed in between buildings on a site next to the posh shopping area of Marylebone sits a surprisingly large and very gothic inspired church.

The Opulent Interior of St Paul’s Church, Knightsbridge

Next to the exceptionally posh Berkeley Hotel in Knightsbridge sits an exceptionally posh church, and despite passing by for years, I have never passed by when it is open - until now.

The Newgate Execution Bell – now in a Holborn Church

A large church stands on the corner opposite the Old Bailey and I have passed its locked gates for rather more years than I care to remember, for church that is open for a few hours each day during the week - has never been open when I am passing.

A look around a gothic inspired church in Westminster

Although just a couple of minutes walk from the activity of Victoria Street and around the corner from Channel4's head office, it is a church you would not casually pass unless you had certain reason to use the street it fronts onto.

Photos from inside the Brompton Oratory

Sitting right next to the V&A museum looms a massive church that despite its location in tourist-central, is hardly known to non-parishioners, and is one of London's most overlooked and yet most glorious of buildings.

The splendour that is the Victorian “Cathedral of North London”

As Private Eye is wont to say, it's Grim up North London, but if the eponymous characters of that newspaper were to dart out of their shell, they might find a remarkable building peaking its tall spire above the council estates of Kilburn.

England’s oldest Lych-Gate found in South London

If you approach an old church, mainly in towns and villages rather than cities, you might enter the churchyard through a small wooden gate with a pitched roof.

Two Churches and Two Stations in Bethnal Green

Bethnal Green sports two Churches with very notable and yet also very different representations of the Stations of the Cross. Both built within 80 years of each other, yet the older is also the younger, thanks to the after effects…

A scale model of Old London Bridge

If you are the sort of church that has a long association with a famous bridge, it is possibly not that surprising that you might have a large model of said bridge in your building. Such is the church of…

A look around St. Margaret’s Church, Barking

Some 800 years ago, a church was built in the grounds of the existing Barking Abbey and while the Abbey has long since vanished, the church still remains as a cornerstone of Christian worship in the town.

Tom Cribb’s snobbish memorial in Woolwich

If you were wandering through a churchyard in Woolwich, you might spy a rather aloof, snobbish even, memorial stuck in a somewhat overlooked corner behind another building.

See London’s best preserved Roman floor in a Church Crypt

If you were to visit a certain Church in the City of London and go down into its crypt museum, almost overlooked under the stairs you can find one of the most perfectly preserved tessellated Roman pavements in the City.…

Finally getting inside St Dunstan-in-the-West

There is a very distinctive church frontage almost next to the Royal Court of Justice on Fleet Street that I have wanted to peer inside for years, but every time I walked past, the doors have been firmly closed.

A 15th century Clock Tower is fund raising for urgent repairs

There has been a church tower on the banks of the Thames in Fulham for over 600 years ringing out the hours and calls to prayer, and I was given a chance to have a climb up the 15th century…

A look around St Lawrence Jewry

Sitting on the edge of the large open yard at Guildhall sits somewhat uncomfortably in the space, the church of St Lawrence Jewry Near Guildhall.