St. Ethelburga
St. Ethelburga’s is the smallest church in the City of London, sandwiched between larger office buildings, and the only one in the country dedicated to that saint. It is now the Centre for Peace and Reconciliation.
St. Ethelburga can be seen inside the city wall, on the east side of Bishopsgate Street, in Civitas Londinum (the ‘Agas map’) from about 1561. Its parish straddled both sides of the street.
The smallest church in the City of London is dedicated to St. Ethelburga, the 7th century Abbess of Barking Abbey (to which All Hallows by the Tower belonged). Ethelburga was the daughter of Ethelbert, the Saxon Christian King of Kent, and sister of Bishop of London, St. Erkenwald. The oldest record of the church dates from 1250, but the dedication suggests a much earlier foundation, probably during the Norman period. Its parish straddled both sides of Bishopsgate Street, immediately inside the Bishops Gate. There is a rectangular nave with a south aisle separated by a four-bay arcade. Parts of the building date from 1390.
For twenty-six years in the early 16th century the rector was John Larke, a friend of Thomas More. In March 1544, along with several others, he was hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn for refusing to acknowledge Henry VIII as the head of the Church in England.
By the 17th century the congregation had increased such that in 1629 a gallery was added for “daughters and maid-servants”. St. Ethelburga escaped the Great Fire and its exterior is now an example of a pre-Fire City church. In 1775 a timber bell-turret was added to the tower, topped by a 17th century weathervane. The 18th century font is inscribed with a Greek palindrome that translates as “Cleanse my sins, not only my face”.
St. Ethelburga in 1870 when it was still hidden behind shops.
Restorations were made during the mid-19th century and early 20th century. In the past Bishopsgate was not as wide as today and the church was set back from the street. Until 1932 the entrance was hidden behind shops on Bishopsgate, built in the late 16th century to provide income for the churchwarden, and accessed through a tunnel. Since 1954 it has been a Guild church and its former parish united with that of St. Helen’s Bishopsgate.
St. Ethelburga was badly damaged in 1993 by an IRA bomb and few original internal features remain, except the Gothic arches. It was rebuilt to the designs of architects Purcell Miller Tritton, with an exterior that recreates how it would have looked in the 15th century. It was reopened in 2002 by Prince Charles as the Centre for Reconciliation and Peace. At the rear is a small memorial garden.
The font of St. Ethelburga church, shown in the 1920s.
Sources include:
- Stephen Miller ‘London’s City Churches’
- R.G. Ellen ‘A London Steeplechase’
- Tony Tucker ‘City of London Churches’
