St. Mary Moorfields

St. Mary Moorfields is the only Roman Catholic church in the City, located between Moorgate and Liverpool Street station. It has only been a City church since the boundary of the City was extended in 1994 to include Eldon Street, being previously at the southern end of the Borough of Hackney. The current St. Mary’s building dates from the start of the 20^th century and is therefore relatively new compared with the other City churches.

For most of the time after the Reformation of the 16^th century, until the First Catholic Relief Act of 1778, Catholic worship was illegal in Britain. However, King James II was Catholic, so in 1686 during his short reign, a Catholic chapel functioned at Lime Street in the City. It was supressed after just two years.

Numerous Catholics, of different occupations but including some silk-weavers, lived around the Moorfields area just to the north of the City. From 1710 a congregation discreetly worshipped at Ropemakers Alley, which ran north from the present Ropemakers Street. Their chapel was known as the Penny Hotel because worshippers paid a penny to the man who guarded the door.

The passing of the Relief Act produced a backlash from Protestants, resulting in the Gordon Riots of June 1780. The mob rampaged around London, attacking every Catholic place of worship they could find. The chapel at Ropemakers Alley was destroyed, as well as the houses of known Catholics, with the altar, fittings and crucifixes ripped out.

A new chapel to replace that at Ropemakers Alley was set up nearby at White Street in 1783, to serve the Catholic congregation of the City, Spitalfields and beyond. Catholic chapels were still technically illegal, so the contract with the builder styles its use as a “warehouse”. It was on land leased from the Merchant Taylors livery company.

By 1800 the number of Catholics in the area served by White Street was estimated to be around five thousand, partly due to immigration and partly that people were by then less secretive about their Catholicism. By 1811 that had risen to at least fifteen thousand. There was not enough space in the chapel at White Street to accommodate the congregation and the lease on the building was due to expire.

St. Mary Moorfields at Finsbury Circus in about 1827, in this illustration by Thomas H. Shepherd.

Finsbury Circus was then being developed nearby into an elegant square. A fund-raising campaign allowed land to be acquired from the Fishmonger’s company on its east side. The grand new St. Mary Moorfields chapel at Finsbury Circus opened with a blessing ceremony in December 1820, attended by most of London’s foreign ambassadors. It had been designed in Classical style by John Newman, after touring the Continent for ideas, which he found at St. Sulpice in Paris, and it was considered his masterpiece. The construction was a lengthy process because the marshy ground required piles to be driven into the ground.

Internally there was a central aisle that divided two sections of box pews. It was large enough to hold two thousand worshippers, although an estimated three thousand were in attendance on the day it opened to the general public the following April. Burials took place from 1819 in the church vaults and churchyard. They were with Catholic rites, something that was often not possible in Anglican cemeteries, with an annual Requiem for those buried there. From the early 1850s until 1869 St. Mary’s acted as the Catholic pro-cathedral, that is the temporary seat of the bishop.

In the 1870s the Metropolitan Railway was being extended from Farringdon to Liverpool Street, passing under the church. St. Mary’s had been constructed on wooden piles and the work below shook and damaged the building, particularly the ceiling and altar piece. It seemed as though the church would have to be demolished, but the railway company contributed £7,000 towards the total cost of repairs and improvements. Following the work, St. Mary’s reopened in October 1875.

New Catholic churches were established around London during the second half of the 19^th century and the City had also become less residential. St. Mary’s became too large for a smaller congregation. In 1899 it was closed and demolished, with the site sold to pay for a new church nearby, as well as to help pay for the building of the new Westminster Cathedral.

The entrance on Eldon Street to the current church.

A new and smaller St. Mary Moorfields was built at Eldon Street, designed by George Campbell Sherrin, who had already designed the Brompton Oratory. It opened in March 1903. The doorway, between shops and without its own frontage, is easy to miss. The arched entrance of Portland stone is with Quattrocento detailing surrounded by a group of sculptures representing the Virgin and Child. The church is on a north-south axis instead of the more traditional east-west. The interior, with a barrel-vaulted ceiling, is reasonably large, with four nave bays. Some of the fixtures, such as the marble altar and Corinthian columns around the altar, are from the old church. Above the entrance to the north-west chapel is a mosaic depicting the execution of Sir Thomas More. The organ is by Corps & Company of Finsbury Park, best known for manufacturing cinema organs.