The Dutch Church, Austin Friars (De Nederlandse Kerk)

In around the year 1249, members of the Augustinian religious order arrived in London, and they established a monastery in the northern part of the City. The name became corrupted and shortened, and they were known as the Austin Friars. Their buildings and grounds covered five and a half acres, which included a market garden where crops were grown to support the friary’s community. The main gatehouse of the precinct was at the junction of Broad Street and Lothbury.

During the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 rioters dragged out and lynched thirteen Flemings who had been sheltering in the friary. Several years later the congregation of the nearby church of St. Christopher le Stocks on Broad Street threatened to raze Austin Friars to the ground following a sermon about the practices and privileges of the friars.

The former monastery of Austin Friars can be seen in Civitas Londinum (the ‘Agas map’) from about 1561. Thomas Cromwell’s palace is shown fronting onto the street of Lothbury.

The friary built houses on the western side of the precinct with rents used to fund the establishment. Other buildings owned by the friars were outside the monastery grounds adjoining Lothbury, including the Bell and Swan inns. The houses were substantial properties, with some rented to foreign ambassadors. In 1513 the Dutch theologian Erasmus stayed in one of the houses during a visit to London but he left without paying what he owed.

From the 1520s one of the houses was rented to Thomas Cromwell. As his position became more prominent at the court of Henry VIII, he purchased adjoining properties on Lothbury to create a palace where he could entertain people of importance, possibly including the King. Cromwell fell from grace in 1540 and was beheaded on Tower Hill in July of that year. His palace at Austin Friars was transferred to the royal household and, three years later, sold to the Drapers’ livery company to create their new hall and residences.

By the time of Cromwell’s downfall, Austin Friars had already been dissolved by Henry VIII and around sixty friars displaced. Yet by the end of the century enough of the site still remained for it to be seen by the Tudor-era historian John Stow. He wrote in his ‘Survey of London’:

Then next have you the Augustine Friars Church and Churchyard: the entering thereunto by a south gate to the west porch, a large church, having a most fine spired steeple, small, high, and straight. I have not seen the like: founded by Humphrey Bohun, Earl of Hereford and Essex, in the year 1253. Reginald Cobham gave his messuage [property] in London to the enlarging thereof, in the year 1344. Humphrey Bohun, Earl of Hereford and Essex, re-edified this church in the year 1354, whose body was there buried in the choir. The small spired steeple of this church was overthrown by a tempest of wind in the year 1362, but was raised of new, as now standeth, to the beautifying of the city. This house was valued at £57, and was surrendered the 12^th of November, the 30^th of Henry VIII [1538].

Stow goes on to list many of over eighty people of note who were buried in the church of Austin Friars, including Edward, elder brother of Richard II (first in line to the throne but who died as a child); Guy de Mericke, Earl of St. Paul; Lucy, Countess of Kent; Richard, 4^th Earl of Arundel (who was beheaded in 1397) and his wife; Sir Francis Atcourt, Earl of Pembroke; Lord John Vere, 12^th Earl of Oxford (beheaded in 1462 on Tower Hill); barons who died in 1471 at the Battle of Barnet; and numerous other members of the nobility.

Following the suppression of the friary, Henry VIII granted much of the former precinct to Sir William Paulet, Marquess of Winchester. Henry’s successor, Edward VI, provided the former church of the monastery to Protestant refugees from the Netherlands and France. In June 1550 he wrote: “It was appointed that the Germans [sic] should have the Austin Friars for their church, to have their services in, for avoiding of all sects of Ana-Baptists, and such like”. Anabaptists were a Christian sect that originated in Switzerland, from which groups such as Amish and Mennonites are descended.

There were at that time no Protestant churches in the Netherlands, with the country about to come under Spanish Catholic rule. It could therefore be argued that the church at Austin Friars was the earliest Dutch Protestant church in the world.

During the five-year reign of Queen Mary in the 1550s England reverted to Catholicism and the Dutch congregation went into exile in that period but continued their association with the church.

The church fell into a poor condition. The steeple was one of the sights of the city and the Corporation of London petitioned the 2^nd Marquess of Winchester to have it repaired. Instead, he had the steeple, choir and transepts demolished, leaving only the nave, and anything of value sold. The Dutch community continued to use that smaller building for their church.

The church had again become ruinous by the mid-17^th century. In 1660 it was demolished and rebuilt. A fire caused damage in 1862 and the building was restored by Edward l’Anson and William Lightly. The 19^th century Gothic Revival architect George Gilbert Scott said of it: “a perfect model of what is most practically useful in a nave of a church”.

Vincent van Gogh was living in Brixton between 1873 and 1874 and he made a sketch of the church, which is in the Van Gogh Museum at Amsterdam.

The old church was completely devastated during the Blitz. The writer James Pope-Hennessy described it as “one of the worst individual instances of bomb damage within the city… The Austin Friars or Dutch Church is simply unrecognisable. Except for the traces of three Gothic arches outlined upon the east wall, no one would guess what sort of building stood there.”

The Dutch Church was rebuilt in the early 1950s by Arthur Bailey with an exterior of Portland stone. The foundation stone was laid by Princess Irene of the Netherlands.

The simple but elegant modern design makes it unique among the churches of the City of London. From the outside it appears to consist of a series of vertical boxes, topped by a slender spire. It contains the church on an upper level, with a meeting hall below. The uncluttered main hall of the church has a high ceiling and tall windows, some in stained glass.