Seventy Years after the Blitz

29 December, 2010

Seventy years ago tonight, German bombers unleashed devastation on the City of London. The blitz had begun in earnest. The iconic image of St Paul’s standing amidst the smoke and flames is justly famous, but what of London’s other churches? Few escaped the war unscathed.

St Mary Abchurch was one of the least damaged, but even that suffered some damage to the dome. Many others were not so lucky. Of the 701 churches in the Diocese of London, 624 were damaged including 99 that were totally destroyed.

Most of the rebuildings were conservative, with Wren architecture and plasterwork, and Grinling Gibbons woodwork, lovingly recreated. One of the most dramatic and extreme examples of this wholesale reconstruction is St Mary-le-Bow, reduced to no more than its tower and outer walls, and entirely rebuilt to the original Wren designs by Laurence King. Only a few of the fittings, notably the new stained glass and the chairs that replaced the pews, are a reminder that in its present form the church is almost wholly post-War.

Some of the non-Anglican churches saw most imaginative and innovative rebuildings, including the City Temple, where a concrete nave by Seeley and Paget is sandwiched between the west and east facades of this extraordinarily grand non-Conformist chapel of 1873-4 by Lockwood and Mawson. At the Dutch Church in what had been the medieval church of the Austin Friars, the destroyed church was wholly rebuilt on a much smaller scale by Arthur Bailey c.1950 and has good post war glass and a fine tapestry by Hans van Norden. The rest of the site was redeveloped with an office building.

Truly good architecture stands the test of time, but which is a truer monument to the Blitz? King's careful recreation of an entirely lost past at St Mary-le-Bow? Or Bailey's wholly new building for the Dutch Church? Much as I love seeing St Mary-le-Bow's tower on Cheapside, and beautiful as the recreated interior is, I can't help but feel that the new Dutch Church is a more genuine building.