St. Andrew Undershaft
St. Andrew Undershaft takes its name from the giant maypole that once stood in front of the church. It is now surrounded by the tall modern buildings of the City’s financial district.
St. Andrew’s stands on the north-east corner of what was the crossroads where Cornhill met Aldgate Street (now both part of Leadenhall Street), with St. Mary Ax running northwards. That is now the centre of the City’s financial district, between the Gherkin building and the Lloyd’s insurance building.
St. Andrew Undershaft is noted on Leadenhall in Civitas Londinum (the ‘Agas map’) from about 1561.
The church is dedicated to the Apostle and ‘undershaft’ refers to the extremely tall maypole, or Cornhill ‘shaft’, which was taller than the church. It stood adjacent to the church, on the crossroads, until a riot on May Day 1517, after which it was taken down. It was put into storage on hooks under the eaves of a row of cottages in Shaft Alley until condemned as idolatry in a sermon by a radical curate. The residents of Shaft Alley then cut it up and made a bonfire.
It is the third church on the site. The first was probably built in the 12th century, and the second, of which parts remain in the base of the existing tower, in the 14th century. The current Perpendicular Gothic building, which escaped the Great Fire and the Blitz, mainly dates from between 1520 and 1532, and was built partly at the expense of Sir William FitzWilliam, one time Sheriff of the City. It is one of the few remaining late medieval City churches.
The view of St. Andrew Undershaft in the 1920s is quite different to that of today.
St. Andrew’s is rectangular, with the tower in the south-west corner. The four pinnacles that top the tower were added in 1883. The interior consists of a nave and north and south aisles, with a high ceiling of flat panels.
An alabaster effigy is of the Tudor historian John Stow sitting at a desk and writing with a quill pen. There are also some Tudor memorial brasses, a commemorative plaque to the 16th century artist Hans Holbein who lived nearby, and sculptured Jacobean sculptured monuments.
Several of the bells are from the end of the 16th century and were some of the earliest to be cast at the Whitechapel Bell Foundry. A major restoration was carried out in 1875 and the Tudor roof renovated in 1930. St. Andrew’s was damaged in the 1992 IRA bombing, which destroyed the 17th century west window. It is no longer a parish church but now used by an independent religious group and administered by St. Helen’s Bishopsgate.
Sources include:
- Stephen Miller ‘London’s City Churches’
- R.G. Ellen ‘A London Steeplechase’
- Tony Tucker ‘City of London Churches’
