St. Helen’s Bishopsgate
St. Helen’s survived both the Great Fire and the Blitz is therefore one of the few remaining medieval City churches. It is unusual in being two churches joined into one. Its collection of monuments is unequalled in any City church. St. Helen’s continues as a very active parish church, attended by City workers and worshippers from far and wide.
Despite its name, St. Helen’s is not located on Bishopsgate. It is set back from that street and these days can be found fronting onto a piazza behind large office buildings, approached along Great St. Helen’s, or from St. Mary Axe.
St. Helen was the mother of the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great. It was he who converted the Roman empire to Christianity and rebuilt the city of Byzantium into the empire’s eastern capital of Constantinople (now Istanbul). Helen is remembered for her 4th century search through the Holy Land for documentary evidence of Jesus and for discovering the ‘True Cross’.
It is believed that a Saxon or Norman church stood on the site of St. Helen’s Bishopsgate. In about 1210 permission was granted for the goldsmith William FitzWilliam to establish the Benedictine convent of St. Helen next to the existing parish church.
St. Helen’s stands between Bishopsgate and St. Mary Axe, as shown in Civitas Londinum (the ‘Agas map’) from about 1561.
In 1538 the nunnery was dissolved by Henry VIII, and shortly after part of the convent buildings were sold to the Leathersellers’ Company. The parish church was then expanded to incorporate the remaining chapel section of the convent. St. Helen’s is therefore unusual in being two churches in one, with a double nave. A line of Gothic arches down the centre of the church still indicates the division between the parish church and the convent. The alter-less nave of the former convent is known as the ‘Nun’s choir’. On the west front a 14th century entrance door is from the original parish church, while a 16th century door led into the former nun’s church.
The high Perpendicular roof and its arcade are from the 15th century. There is a wooden bell turret above the west front. Repairs were carried out in the 1630s at the expense of livery companies, and the south doorway dates from that period. Major renovations were carried out in the 19th century, and a new rectory and church offices were built in 1968.
How St. Helen’s Place and the west front of the church looked in the 1920s.
Given its antiquity and its location in what was a prosperous residential part of the City, St. Helen’s has many old brasses and monumental sculptures for City dignitaries, dating back as far as the 14th century, including that of Sir Thomas Gresham. There are eighteen that were transferred from St. Martin Outwich when that church was demolished in the 19th century. There is a window of William Shakespeare on the north wall. The pulpit is from 1633.
St. Helen’s survived both the Great Fire of 1666 and the Blitz but was badly damaged by two IRA bombs in 1992 and 1993. Restoration was carried out in the following two years by Quinlan Terry, with the interior reorganised into a single floor on the same level.
St. Helen’s continues as a parish church, incorporating the former parishes of St. James Duke’s Place and St. Martin Outwich (both demolished in 1874), St. Ethelburga (a Guild church since 1954) and St. Katharine Cree (a Guild church since the 1960s). It is a very active church with well-attended services, mostly from people residing outside the local area.
Sources include:
- Stephen Millar ‘London’s City Churches’
- R.G. Ellen ‘A London Steeplechase’
- Tony Tucker ‘City of London Churches’
