City of London churches, read one fitting at a time.
London Undone visits City of London churches on foot and from the pews, with Catherine Cartwright questioning a city guide, a Friends of the City Churches trustee and a long-serving rector. The talk runs from puzzling names like Abchurch and Lothbury to Norman fabric, a salvaged pulpit canopy and glass lost to bombs.
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London Undone's City of London Churches series approaches each building the way a patient guide would, from the door inward and one detail at a time. Catherine Cartwright introduces each visit and asks the questions, but most of the knowledge comes from her companions. Kevin Larder, a city guide who is also a volunteer guide at St Bart's Hospital Museum, walks her through St Helen's Bishopsgate and St Bartholomew the Great. Signe, of the Friends of the City Churches, sits with her in St Mary Abchurch and St Margaret Lothbury. At St Mary-le-Bow the voice is the rector's, speaking from the crypt chapel after twenty years in post. Several conversations begin with the name. Nobody knows where Lothbury comes from, Abchurch may mean 'Up Church' for its place on the slope down to the Thames, and Mary-le-Bow's name is read as Norman French, pointing to a foundation soon after the Conquest. Then attention turns to what is actually in front of them. St Helen's Bishopsgate has two naves and two entrances, a parish church from 1140 beside a nuns' choir from 1210. St Margaret Lothbury owes some of its fittings to an incumbent named Ingram, who picked through other people's demolition sites, and its huge pulpit canopy came from All Hallows the Great. At St Mary Abchurch, letters from Grinling Gibbons asking to be paid turned up in the parish chest in the 1950s, preserved thanks to wardens from a merged parish who queried every penny. St Mary-le-Bow tells a different story. Its post-fire church, by Wren or possibly Hooke, sat on the old crypt as a preaching box modelled on the Temple of Maxentius in Rome, and after the destruction of 1941 almost nothing but the walls survived. The restorer Lawrence King rebuilt it with the aim of making it London's liturgical movement church. Saints are treated with affection. St Etheldreda is introduced as an Anglo-Saxon princess, twice married, who became abbess of a community at Ely, and the guest there, a lecturer, jokes about thinking of her before every talk, since she is claimed as patron of throat infections. Nearby glass shows St Brigid, recalling the Irish population in the area when the railways were being built. St Bartholomew the Great brings lighter asides, with film shoots from Shakespeare in Love to Thor: The Dark World, which used it as Valhalla, and reportedly the Muppets, alongside Norman fabric some 900 years old and a cloister door from 1400. Some visits end with practical pointers, such as ringing St Helen's ahead or checking events for St Bartholomew's 900th anniversary, and one carries a postscript about a Russian congregation that left St Mary Abchurch before its service could be recorded. What a listener gets is a habit of reading these churches as layered records, where a pulpit canopy, a memorial half under a radiator cover or a trace of the River Walbrook each holds a piece of the City's past.
Made for: Suits a listener who stands in an old church wondering about the carvings, the glass and the odd name over the door, and wants a knowledgeable companion to explain them. Also a good fit for someone planning to visit City of London churches in person.
What sets it apart: The history is recorded inside the churches themselves, with a city guide, a Friends of the City Churches volunteer and a rector pointing at specific objects. Each story is tied to something a visitor can go and find: a pulpit canopy brought from another church, a memorial half under a radiator cover, a crypt reused as foundations.
City of London, City of Westminster and Blue Badge Guide. Podcasting about unusual sites in and around London.
A doorway three feet below your shoes: Catherine Cartwright finds the floor has moved.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A careful walk through a London church where medieval and later histories meet across two naves.
St Helen's Bishopsgate comes across as a church with several lives still visible at once. Its parish church, nuns choir, Jacobean crenellations, clock tower, and two entrances give London Undone plenty to work with as Kevin Larder and Catherine Cartwright move through the…
St Etheldreda's turns a just-outside-the-City church into a layered encounter with relics, radiant glass, and Shakespearean sanctuary.
St Etheldreda's sits just outside the City of London, but London Undone treats it as a dense pocket of history rather than a tucked-away stop.
St Mary Abchurch's odd name, carvings, parish papers, and continued use reveal a church shaped by history and argument.
St Mary Abchurch comes through as a City church whose odd name, tucked-away position off Cannon Street, and richly worked interior all point into London's layered past.
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London Undone visits St Etheldreda’s on Ely Place, a Gothic church tied to the Bishop of Ely’s palace and later to Spanish ambassador Don Diego Sarmiento de Acosta.
London Undone's Catherine Cartwright and Kevin Larder walk through St Helen's Bishopsgate, a City of London church with a parish side from 1140 and a nuns' choir from 1210.
London Undone places St Margaret Lothbury in the financial center of the City, directly across from the Bank of England and above the Walbrook.
Catherine Cartwright and Kevin Larder use St Bartholomew the Great to trace how a church, a hospital, and a Smithfield legend have shared the same site for about 900 years.
["St Mary Abchurch off Cannon Street is presented as a Wren church with a plain exterior and a crowded interior.", "Catherine Cartwright and Signe Hoffus cover the painted dome, William Snow's 1708 ceiling, and Grinling Gibbons's reredos.", "They also trace the church back to the 12th century, describe Blitz damage and a 1958 restoration, and tell the story of Lord Ebersham blocking an air raid shelter after a survey found the crypt beneath the pavement.", "The final stretch shows the building still working as a guild church, with Wednesday Anglican services, Russian Orthodox worship, AA groups, choir practices, and a Mother's Union banner from a busier parish era."]
George Bush, rector of St Mary-le-Bow for 20 years, explains why the church's central City location made its bell a marker for London.
Nicholas Hills says St Andrew Holborn's church site dates to about 959, and John Tavey's 1348 bequest funded its upkeep.
St Bride's rector Alison Joyce says the church's sixth-century roots sit alongside a ministry to journalists that now reaches beyond Fleet Street.
Father David Armstrong discusses the history and role of St Botolph without Bishopsgate, a medieval church that offered sanctuary to travelers outside London's city walls.
A podcast exploring the history and curiosities of London churches, featuring a musical interlude from the Halcyon Quartet at St Sepulchre without Newgate.
A guided tour of St Botolph Aldgate church, exploring its history as a threshold for travelers and its inclusive legacy.
An exploration of the oldest church in the City of London, All Hallows by the Tower, tracing its origins back to 675 AD.