St. Mary at Hill church

St. Mary at Hill is one of a series of ancient narrow streets that run down from the higher ground of Eastcheap and Great Tower Street to river level at Lower Thames Street. The Tudor historian John Stow says of the lane: “called on the hill, because of the ascent from Billingsgate… This lane on both sides is furnished with many fair houses for merchants”.

There are two entrances to the church and, surprisingly, the main entrance is not on St. Mary at Hill but through the tower on the parallel Lovat Lane. It is also possible to enter through an archway below an office building on St. Mary at Hill, passing the small churchyard to the north of the building.

St. Mary’s was first mentioned in around 1177 and originally known as Sanctee Mariæ Hupenhulle. It was rebuilt in the 15^th century with four chapels. There was also a pardon churchyard – a burial ground with a small chapel in which the living could pray for the souls of the dead, particularly those who died in a plague.

As well as being close to Billingsgate fish market, the parish of St. Mary’s was also where many affluent and important people resided. These two points are clear from Stow’s 1598 ‘A Survey of London’:

…as Robert Fabian writeth, saying thus:- “In the year 1497, in the month of April, as labourers digged for the foundation of a wall, within the Church of St. Mary Hill, near unto Billingsgate, they found a coffin of rotten timber, and therein the corpse of a woman, whole of skin, and of bones undissevered, and the joints of her arms pliable, without breaking of the skin, upon whose sepulchre this was graven: ‘Here lieth the bodies of Richard Hackney, fishmonger, and Alice his wife’”. The which Richard was sheriff in the 15^th [year of the reign of] Edward II [1322]. Her body was kept above ground three or four days without nuisance, but then it waxed unsavoury, and so was again buried. John Mordand, stock-fishmonger, was buried there, 1387; Nicholas Exton, fishmonger, mayor 1387; William Cambridge, mayor 1420; Richard Goslin, sheriff 1422; William Philip, sergeant-at-arms, 1473; Robert Reuell, one of the sheriffs 1490, gave liberally toward the new building of this church and steeple, and was there buried; William Remington, mayor 1590; Sir Thomas Blanke, mayor 1582; William Holstocke, esquire, comptroller of the king’s ships; Sir Cuthbert Buckle, mayor 1594.

St. Mary at Hill church was badly damaged, but not completely destroyed, in the Great Fire, so Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke were able to restore it by including much of the older structure. It was therefore the first of the City churches to be restored, completed in 1674. Unusually, the 15^th century red-brick battlemented tower on the west side was retained which, along with St. Mary Aldermary, is a rare thing amongst Wren’s churches. It continues to provide a splendid view when seen along Lovat Lane from Eastcheap, giving one the sense of how the City would have looked before the Great Fire.

The interior is almost square, with Wren’s design in the form of a Greek Cross pattern of four equal arms, similar to St. Martin Ludgate and St. Anne and St. Agnes. Later Wren churches, such as St. Mary Abchurch and St. Stephen Walbrook, include domes supported by the external walls. Here, a shallow central saucer-dome is supported on four free-standing columns in the Byzantine style. It contains a vaulted ceiling and dome resting on four freestanding columns.

The east exterior on St. Mary at Hill.

In contrast to the 15^th century tower on the west side of the church on Lovet Lane, the east exterior on St. Mary at Hill is in Wren’s 17^th century Classical style, with a projecting clock. The original clock dates from the time of the Wren and Hooke restoration and may have been produced by John Wise. It then had only an hour hand but the minute hand was added in the 1820s. The clock was replaced in the 1960s. Over time it began to tilt towards the pavement but now the main beam has been reinforced with supporting rods. In recent times it has been fully restored.

Restoration, including rebuilding the tower, was undertaken by George Gwilt in the late 18^th century. Further restoration was made by W. Gibbs Rogers in the 1840s after a fire, and additional work in the late 1960s.

St. Mary’s survived the Second World War, with much of the Wren-era interiors intact. Many City churches have one or two swordrests but in St. Mary’s there were six, two from St. George Botolph Lane, which was demolished in 1899. In his book about the City churches, Sir John Betjeman described St. Mary’s as:

…the least spoiled and the most gorgeous interior in the City… the high pews with their many delicate swordrests, the altar-piece, altar table, turned Communion rails, the sounding board and pulpit below, approached by a long wooden staircase with carved balusters, are all seen in a mysterious light filtering through the windows of clear glass with a few pretty early Victorian bands of colour.

A major fire in 1988, however, caused much destruction. Excavation work by archaeologists uncovered Roman and Saxon remains. The church was again restored in 1990-92 but the box pews, pulpit and reredos and the six swordrests are currently in storage awaiting full restoration.

What has been carefully restored and can be seen in situ is the wonderful woodwork adorning the west gallery by the Victorian woodcarver William Gibbs Rogers, in the style of Grinling Gibbons. The 19^th century organ is by William Hill in a 17^th century case.

In the 1530s Thomas Tallis, a court composer to the Tudor monarchs, was employed as a singer and organist at St. Mary’s.  The rector in the early 20^th century was Wilson Carlile, who in 1888 had founded the Church Army, which continues to work to spread Christianity in Britain and tackle deprivation. His lively services included playing his trombone from the pulpit. Billingsgate fish market was nearby until 1982 when it moved to Docklands. An annual fish festival is still held each October at St. Mary’s.

St. Mary’s remains as a parochial church but is now shared with a Lutheran congregation. The former parishes of five churches have been united with that of St. Mary: St. Andrew Hubbard, St. Botolph Billingsgate, and St. Gabriel Fen (destroyed in the Great Fire); St. George Botolph Lane (demolished in 1899), and St. Margaret Pattens (which became a Guild church in 1954, no longer with its own parish).