Hawksmoor walkabout

Saturday 17 February

Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.

From T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land:  Part I. The Burial of the Dead

The Waste Land. The keynote of a selection of T. S. Eliot poems that formed part of my A-level English Literature syllabus. As a sixth former, the literary references and constant foreign-language insertions helped to make the whole poem opaque to me – evidently our teacher had expected this, because my A-level text has annotations next to practically every line where she had had to explain to us what Eliot was believed to have been talking about. I’m aware that TWL is regarded as a significant poem and am quite prepared to believe it is, but it was certainly lost on me at the time. I’ve just re-read Part I in the course of locating the above quote, and enjoyed it rather more than I remember doing at 18. Perhaps having to study something always takes the life out of it a bit.

(For a long while now – quite possibly ever since my A-level – Mum has suggested that I read The Four Quartets, especially Little Gidding, as giving a more positive impression of Eliot. I’m ashamed to say that I don’t think I’ve read them yet.)

The reason for the quote from TWL was its reference to the church of St Mary Woolnoth. Various small snippets from TWL had stuck in my mind over the years, of which the name of this church was one, though I had never specifically sought it out before. Mum visited me in Reading a couple of weeks ago with a view to visiting some of the churches designed or contributed to by Nicholas Hawksmoor, an associate of Sir Christopher Wren who assisted with the concerted rebuild of churches that seems to have taken place after the Great Fire of London.

We took the Elizabeth Line from Reading to Liverpool Street, Mum armed with this useful map by Blue Crow media (pic nicked from their website). We ended up visiting six churches, the first five clustered reasonably close together in the City. Of the six, only two (St Mary Woolnoth and Christ Church Spitalfields) were fully designed by Hawksmoor; the others he contributed bits to, spires in the case of three and the top part of the tower in the case of one. There are a total of six churches wholly designed by Hawksmoor but visiting all of them would have meant travelling around a bit, and we decided to largely confine ourselves to several churches close together in the City of London, with a detour at the end at my request to view CCS. Unfortunately we had both overlooked to check in advance whether any of them were open on a Saturday, and none of them were – or perhaps Christ Church Spitalfields was, but we were tiring by then and didn’t bother to investigate. So we had to confine ourselves to viewing them from the outside - but had an interesting walkabout in the process.

St Michael, Cornhill

There was quite a large group of people assembling outside SMC – we couldn’t tell why, maybe waiting for a tour guide. I couldn’t photograph it properly without getting them in, hence this oddly-angled picture of the tower. Did snap this information board though. Apparently the upper parts of the tower were by Hawksmoor.

St Mary Woolnoth

Hawksmoor’s only City of London church out of the six wholly designed by him. St Mary Woolnoth is an unusual and severe-looking church, crammed onto a ridiculously tight plot at the junction of King William Street and Lombard Street. It was hard to tell whether at some point it had had a churchyard – it doesn’t appear to have one now. The little walkthrough behind it (Post Office Court) looks relatively modern so maybe the churchyard was sold off for building at some point. The church seems to have done well to still be standing – by all accounts it was threatened with demolition more than once and had Bank underground station constructed underneath it, losing its crypt in the process. Additionally, part of it seemed to be housing a Starbucks when we passed. Amazed it's maintained its dignity throughout all that.

St Mary Woolnoth

St Stephen Walbrook

The church of St Stephen Walbrook has a plaque on the side noting the founding of the Samaritans by its then-rector Chad Varah. Apparently the first Samaritans branch operated from a crypt beneath the church. Looking at the Wikipedia page, it doesn't actually mention any involvement of Hawksmoor in this church, but it appeared on Mum's leaflet so presumably there was something - a spire, I think.

Near to this church we found ourselves passing the Bloomberg building, and I mentioned the Mithraeum to Mum in passing. As it looked open, we decided to pop in - it was much more crowded than when Ruth and I had visited in January 2020 but we were able to catch the “immersive experience” where they dim the lights and play some recorded Latin chanting, such as the lads at the Temple of Mithras might have indulged in in the past.

St Stephen Walbrook

St Michael Paternoster Royal

After leaving that, we went down past Cannon Street station and along Upper Thames Street for a look at St Michael Paternoster Royal, where Dick Whittington is allegedly buried though no one now knows exactly where his grave was. Unlike the others, this church did have its door open, but we weren’t sure whether it’s still actually a church – there were some young people with musical instruments going inside. We poked our heads inside; the building seemed to be split into a church area in one half and what seemed to be some sort of meeting hall occupying the other.

St Michael Paternoster Royal

St James Garlickhythe

Hawksmoor designed the spire for this Wren church. I remember going to look at it briefly on a walkabout with Ray some years ago, probably amused by its name (see also St Andrew by the Wardrobe).

St James Garlickhythe

After St James G, we decided to seek lunch and after a bit of indecision found ourselves in Koya City, a Japanese noodle restaurant in the Bloomberg Arcade. I had fancied some Asian food but thought this looked full on passing it, but Mum spotted a table in the corner. Apparently Dad thinks she has a knack for e.g. finding a parking space in a car park that appears full. I had the Kamo Hiya-Atsu, duck in hot broth with cold udon. The duck soup was delicious; I wasn't so sure about the cold noodles. Mum had a frankly intimidatingly large tempura prawn: I think we had been expecting a selection of smaller prawns.

My lunch

Mum's massive tempura prawn

Christ Church, Spitalfields

After lunch I decided I wanted to go and see CCS, this being the only of Hawksmoor’s churches I could have visualized in advance. We retraced our steps back towards Liverpool Street and then veered off to the east, though ended up taking rather more of a meandering route than I think we needed to have done. On the way we passed this statue in Devonshire Square.

'The Knight of the Cnihtengild' by Denys Mitchell

We viewed the striking church from the side and the front before heading back to Liverpool Street.

CCS from the side

CCS from the front

Since our trip, I’ve learnt about Peter Ackroyd’s 1985 novel Hawksmoor, apparently about a series of murders committed in the Hawskmoor churches. Thinking this sounded a bit of a laugh I’ve just ordered a copy off AbeBooks for £2.95. Mum has been wading through Ackroyd’s London: The Biography for a little while now; I am hoping the novel proves somewhat lighter.