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Heritage
History
The
History of St Giles-in-the-Fields
There has been a house of prayer on this site
since 1101, when Queen Matilda, wife of
Henry I, founded a leper hospital here.
The chapel probably became the church of a small
village, which serviced the hospital, with the
lepers screened off. In common with the other
monasteries, the hospital was dissolved by Henry
VIII in 1539 and its lands sold. The hospital
chapel became a parish church and the first Rector
of St Giles was appointed in 1547. This was when
the words "in-the-fields" were added to
its name.
The earliest illustration shows a church with
a round tower, capped by a dome - which was replaced
by a larger spire in 1617. Shortly afterwards
the church was considered ruinous and a Gothic
brick building was built between 1623-1630. This
was largely paid for by Alice, Duchess Dudley,
wife of Robert Dudley and consecrated by William
Laud, Bishop of London. The church still has an
illuminated manuscript listing the subscribers
to this rebuilding, known as the Doomsday Book.
Less than 100 years later, the new church was
itself in a poor condition from damp, probably
caused by the large number of Plague victim burials,
the parishoners petitioned the Commissioners appointed
in 1711 to build new churches in the London suburbs,
for a grant to rebuild the church and were initially
refused because it was not a new foundation. Eventually
they allocated £8,000 and a new church
was built in 1730-34, designed by the architect
Henry Flitcroft in the palladian style
(Flitcroft went on to design Woburn Abbey, the
seat of the Dukes of Bedford, one of the principal
landowners in this part of London). At the same
time the elegant Vestry House was built,
for meetings of the Vestry, the council of laypeople
and clergy who managed parish affairs.
The population of the parish grew enormously
in the 18th and 19th centuries, exceeding 30,000
by 1831. The "rookeries" between the church
and Great Russell Street, and the area called
Seven Dials, were amongst the most notorious in
London for poverty and squalour. [See Peter Ackroyd's
chapter on St Giles in his book London: The
Biography]
The distinguished architects Sir Arthur Blomfield
and Wiliam Butterfield made modest alterations
in 1875 and 1896. St Giles escaped the severe
damage in the bombing in the Second World War,
which merely removed most of the Victorian glass.
The church underwent a major restoration in 1952-3
described by John Betjeman as
"One of the most successful post-war church
restorations…"
'The Spectator' March 9th 1956.
Since the 1950s the area has changed enormously,
with the loss of small shops and houses in St
Giles' High Street and the construction of the
massive St Giles Court and Centre Point.
The resident population is now about 4,600, and
the church and churchyard have become an oasis
of calm and contemplation in the midst of a vibrant
commercial and cultural district.
The
Church you can see
The style of architecture is Palladian,
based on the ideas of an Italian architect of
the 16th century, Andrea Palladio and early Christian
basilica. The Christian journey begins with baptism,
and the font is to be found to the right
of the main door into the church. It is an elegant
Regency design. With no stained glass windows
in the aisles, and no separate side-chapels, there
is nothing to distract the eye from the main journey,
from the back of the church to the East end, passing
the lectern and the pulpit, given
in 1675 by John Sharp, Archbishop of York during
his time as Rector, where the Word of God is read
and preached, through to the sanctuary,
where the sacrament of Holy Communion is celebrated.
The Ten Commandments of the Old Testament
covenant with Moses are set above the altar, with
Moses and Aaron in the paintings to the
right and left, ascribed on the reverse to Francisco
Vieira the Younger, Court painter to the King
of Portugal. Above the altar is a "Pelican
in her piety", a mediaeval image, in which
the mother bird feeds her young with her own blood
- a symbol of what Jesus Christ does for humanity
on the Cross and in the sacrament of Communion,
the New Testament covenant. Above this, there
is the final destination of the journey, the depiction
in glass of the Transfiguration, when the
disciples saw the light of God shining from the
human face of Christ. Christian doctrine is that
we are all to be transfigured in the end, changed
into the fullness of what God means us to be.
Elsewhere in the church there are numerous items
of interest. On the north side there is the pulpit
from the West Street Chapel which was John
and Charles Wesley's headquarters in the 18th
century. At the back of the church is the mayoral
chair of the Borough of Holborn, of which
St Giles was the municipal church until the re-organisation
of the 1960s. The organ dates mainly from
the 18th century.
There are few remaining tombstones in the churchyard,
but there are many memorials inside the church.
Some commemorate local worthies, but others remind
us of those who have made a contribution to the
cultural and political life of the nation - such
as George Chapman, the translater of Homer;
Richard Pendrell, preserver and conductor
of Charles II; Andrew Marvell, politician
and poet; Lord Belasyse, royalist; Sir
Roger L'Estrange, the last public censor;
John Flaxman, sculptor; Luke Hansard,
printer to the House of Commons; Thomas Earnshaw,
watch and chronometer maker. The 75 volumes of
the parish registers also carry many entries concerning
the great and the good (and the not so good -
Saint Giles was the last church on the route to
the gallows at Tyburn, and the Churchwardens paid
for the condemned to have a drink at the next
door pub, the Angel, before they went to be hanged).
Rectors
of St Giles
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1547 |
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Sir William Rowlandson |
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1571 |
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Geoffrey Evans |
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1579 |
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William Steward |
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1590 |
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Nathaniel Baxter |
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1591 |
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Thomas Salisbury |
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1592 |
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Joseph Clerk |
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1616 |
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Roger Manwayring
(Chap to James I, Dean of Worcestor, Bishop
of St David's) |
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Undated |
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Gilbert Dillingham |
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1635 |
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Brian Walton
(Bishop of Chester)
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1636 |
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William Heywood
(Dom Chap to Abp Laud,
Chap Charles I, Preb of St Paul's) |
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During the Commonwealth
- Henry Cornish, Arthur Molyne and Thomas
Case were "ministers" respectively of St Giles-in-the-Fields
- Dr Heywood being restored on the return
of Charles II. |
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1663 |
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Robert Boreman |
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1675 |
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John Sharp
(Archdeacon of Berks, Preb
of Norwich, Chap to Charles II, Dean of Canterbury,
Archbishop of York) |
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1691 |
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John Scott
(Canon of Windsor)
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1695 |
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William Hayley
(Dean of Chichester,
Chap to William III) |
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1715 |
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William Baker
(Bishop of Bangor,
Bishop of Norwich) |
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1732 |
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Henry Gally
(Chap to George II) |
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1769 |
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John Smyth
(Prebendary of Norwich)
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1788 |
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John Buckner
(Bishop of Chichester) |
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1824 |
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Christopher Benson
(Master of the Temple) |
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1826 |
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James Endell Tyler
(Canon Residentiary
of St Paul's) |
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1851 |
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Robert Bickersteth
(Bishop of Ripon)
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1857 |
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Antony Wilson Thorold
(Bishop of Rochester,
Bishop of Winchester) |
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1867 |
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John Marjoribanks Nisbet
(Canon Residentiary
of Norwich) |
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1892 |
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Henry William Parry Richards
(Prebendary of St Paul's)
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1899 |
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William Covington
(Prebendary and Canon
of St Paul's) |
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1909 |
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Wilfred Harold Davies |
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1929 |
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Albert Henry Lloyd |
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1941 |
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Ernest Reginald Moore |
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1949 |
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Gordon Clifford Taylor |
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2000 |
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William Mungo Jacob
(Archdeacon of Charing
Cross) |
St
Giles and Maryland, USA
Cecil Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore and the
first Proprietory of Maryland, fitted out the
ships Ark and Dove which sailed with 200 adventurers,
including some from St Giles' parish, in 1633.
He did not travel with them, and adminstered the
colony from England. He died in the parish in
December 1675 and was buried in St Giles-in-the-Fields.
Charles Calvert, third Lord Baltimore, was both
Proprietory and Governor, spending much time in
the colony, but he lost the authority to govern
during the revolution of 1688 as he was a Roman
Catholic. His daughter-in-law, Mrs Jane Calvert
was buried at St Giles in May 1692, and his second
wife, Jane, was buried at St Giles in January,
1701. His third wife, Mary, was also buried at
St Giles in March 1710.
A memorial to Cecil, Lord Baltimore was inaugurated
on 10th May 1996 in the presence of the United
States Ambassador. It is on the west wall, under
the gallery, and was unveiled by the Governor
of Maryland, Parris N. Glendening.
Historical
Society of Maryland
St Giles and Sydney, Australia
William Balmain, one of the founders of New South
Wales and Principal Surgeon of the Colony, after
whom a suburb of Sydney is named, was buried at
St Giles in 1803. A memorial to William Balmain
was placed on the north-west wall, under the gallery,
with the assistance of the Balmain Society of
Sydney in 1996.
St
Giles and the Catholic Martyrs
The testimony of Titus Oates, led during 1678-81,
to the burial in St Giles Churchyard of twelve
Roman Catholic martyrs who were later beatified
- Whitebread, Harcourt, Fenwick, Gavan, Turner,
Coleman, Langhorne, Mico, Ireland, Grove, Pickering
and Oliver Plunket, Archbishop of Armagh. All
were priests except Coleman, who was secretary
to the Duchess of York, Langhorne, who was a barrister,
Grove, and Pickering, who was a laybrother; and
all except Mico, who died after his arrest, had
been executed at Tyburn (then close to where Marble
Arch now stands). The first five are the Jesuit
fathers with whom Plunket asked to be buried in
the churchyard of St. Giles. The burial place
is said to be near the north wall of the church.
Though the body of Oliver Plunket, who was canonised
in 1975, was later exhumed and taken to Lamspringe
in Germany (the head being now at Drogheda and
the body at Downside), there is in the St. Giles
Burial Register for 1 July, 1681 a most legible
entry of the burial.
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