Blitz

In 1946, historian William Kent undertook a survey of London’s heritage lost as a result of the Blitz. This culminated in a book ‘The Lost Treasures of London’ published in 1947 which provides seven walks around London detailing snippets of the local history and the fate of the buildings. Kent opens his book with ‘This is a sad book. It cannot be otherwise’. Londoners had become hardened to ruins - again.

As well as buildings he detailed the fate of books, pictures, furnishings and the contents of treasuries. His main focus was churches and livery companies – the custodians of many of the city’s antiquities. With the country bankrupt and deep in austerity there seemed little prospect that the twenty-one churches and thirty-one livery halls damaged or destroyed in the blitz would ever get restored.

On the night of Sunday 29th December 1940, the Luftwaffe inflicted one their most damaging raids creating the ‘Second Great Fire of London’. Thousands of incendiary bombs landed in the deserted commercial quarters around St. Paul’s. As Kent notes ‘They were weird and terrifying…there was practically no sound of concussion, but they caused conflagration everywhere’. St. Paul’s was hit but survived due to its team of firewatchers who dealt quickly with the twenty-eight bombs that fell on it. Eight of Wren’s other churches did not survive the night.

Centre of the publishing world, Paternoster Row to the north of St. Paul’s provided millions of books as fuel for the incendiaries. Kent quotes a contemporary poem – ‘They who their own land robbed of light and learning, kindled the books here, a brand for London’s burning’. The ‘greatest distributor of books in the world’ Simpkin-Marshall alone lost around four million volumes plus all of its 150-year-old archive.

The raids continued into 1941 culminating in the night of the 10th May when amongst other casualties, the House of Commons was gutted and St Clement Danes ‘received its knock-out blow’. The following morning ‘a pall of smoke over the city seemed to symbolise its sense of mourning’.

When Hitler invaded the Soviet Union the following month, the Luftwaffe had priorities other than Britain. According to Kent, in 1940 the County of London had witnessed four hundred and seventeen air raid warnings; in 1941, one hundred and fifty-four. There were only twenty-five in the whole of 1942 and ninety five in 1943. Then came the V-bombs. In 1944 the number of alerts rose to five hundred and eight. Their impact was more suburban with only one rocket falling in the city. The final deadly rocket fell on two blocks of flats in Stepney killing one hundred and thirty-four people just six weeks before VE Day.

Notwithstanding the personal and cultural losses, Kent notes ‘it might have been worse and most of us expected that it would be’. Prior to the war there were ‘dismal forebodings’ by some who ‘envisaged bombs persistent and plentiful, day after day, week after week, like the rain that fell in Noah’s flood’. Had Hitler’s campaign against London persisted then great swathes of the city could have suffered the same fate as that around St. Paul’s.

In addition, foresight had saved many of the ‘portable antiquities’ by relocation to safer places. Kent includes details of some of the ‘Evacuated Treasures’. Pictures from the National Gallery went to Manod Quarry in Wales. Hall Barn near Beaconsfield became home to the Wallace Collection, the Tower Armoury and Rubens’ famous Banqueting Hall ceiling. Around two thousand tons of documents from the Public Record Office, city companies and parishes were relocated around the country. Some treasures didn’t go that far – a disused stretch of the underground from Aldwych to Piccadilly housed artefacts from the British Museum (including the Elgin Marbles) and the Tate Gallery.

Kent also mentions London’s outdoor statues. It seems evacuees were rare – Charles I statue from Charing Cross went to Mentmore Towers and George III and William III to Berkhampstead Castle. Eros went to Coopers Hill in Surrey. Most were bricked up and some left unprotected. Around Parliament, Cromwell and Richard I were ‘neither removed nor covered’. Richard the Lion Heart did receive some damage – his uplifted sword was bent by bomb blast. John Reith, then Commissioner of Works ‘ordained that the sword be left…as a symbol… a token that we were bent but never broken’.

The western end of the city of London captured on 25th April 1950.

The area around St. Paul’s is still laid waste over nine years after the ‘Second Great Fire of London’. The Portland stone towers of Wren’s churches gleam amid the ruins.

In the right foreground is St Mary Somerset - a church that fell victim to demographics not bombs. It was one of twenty-three churches demolished in the nineteenth and early twentieth Centuries (save its tower with finials designed by Hawksmoor) as the city’s population dwindled and headed for the suburbs. The sale of the land helped pay for the new suburban churches and in this case provided furnishings and bells for its successor – St Mary’s Hoxton. Today this tower is a luxury home.

To its north is St Nicholas Cole Abbey a curious name which has nothing to do with a monastery but possibly from ‘cold harbour’ – but throughout its history the spelling of its soubriquet has been fluid. The pre-fire church was the first to revert to the Roman Catholic rite during Mary Tudor’s brief counter-reformation. It was also the first of Wren’s city churches to be completed. The bombed-out church features briefly in the Ealing comedy ‘The Lavender Hill Mob’ providing a backdrop as the gang steal the bullion van.

Before the first great fire in 1666 another two churches stood between St Mary and St Nicholas. In 1670 a committee chaired by Wren decided that thirty-five of the original eighty-seven city churches would not be rebuilt and the parishes would be absorbed by their neighbours. These were two of the unfortunate. Slightly to the west stood St Mary Mounthaw, London’s smallest church and its former tiny parish lies mostly under Queen Victoria Street. To the east, St. Nicholas Olave was itself the amalgamation of two parishes. A ‘convenient church’ it had been ‘repaired and beautified’ just forty years before the fire.

St Mary Magdalene stood slightly to the north west of St Nicholas and also served a minute parish. On Easter Day 1653 the diarist John Evelyn took communion here, an act banned under the Commonwealth. In 1886 an adjacent warehouse caught fire which spread into the church’s roof causing substantial damage. As there were a number of parishes in the area being closed due to depopulation it was decided not to effect a repair and although not on the original list to be demolished it was brought down shortly afterwards.

Just to the east of St Paul’s stands St Augustine and St Faith another amalgamation. St Faith’s stood until 1256 when it was demolished to enable eastern extension of the medieval cathedral. After that the congregation met in the cathedral crypt. Following the great fire they moved again to St Augustine’s. The tower still survives as an adjunct to St Paul’s school.

Behind St. Paul’s is Christchurch, Newgate Street. This is the site of London’s Greyfriar’s which featured the city’s second largest church. Before its destruction in the Great Fire, the church extended across the piazza to the west. Hence, the current west tower would have been at the crossing. Edward VI’s Bluecoat school took over the conventual buildings and it became Christ’s Hospital which gave an education to London’s poor.

The random nature of aerial bombardment is demonstrated by the area to the south west of the cathedral which appears relatively unscathed. The tiny St Benet’s, Pauls Wharf is probably Wren’s best-preserved interior as it became one of only four churches to survive the Blitz. It served as venue for the hasty weddings arranged by the nearby Doctors’ Commons civil law practice. Due to be demolished in the nineteenth century cull of parishes with little congregation, it was given to the Welsh Anglicans instead. It is also the guild church for the Royal College of Arms another miraculous survivor on the opposite side of Queen Victoria Street. The huge block further west is Faraday House then London’s International Telephone Exchange, built on the site of the Doctors’ Commons. It attracted controversy by obscuring views of St Paul’s from the river. All buildings completed since have been restricted to fewer storeys.

Top right is St. Vedast, Foster Lane (Foster being an anglicisation of Vedast’s name in French - Vaast). Damaged in the Great Fire, Wren’s replacement was built largely on its medieval walls, helping make it his cheapest commission. The medieval tower remained but by 1694, it was deemed unsafe and a new section inserted topped by a baroque spire possibly designed by Hawksmoor. Gutted again in 1940 the church was rebuilt by 1962 incorporating items from destroyed churches such as the pulpit from All Hallows’, Bread Street and the font and cover from St. Anne & St. Agnes and the Reredos from the long lost St. Christopher le Stocks.

The bucolic city. View looking north east from Distaff Lane near St. Nicholas Cole Abbey across swathes of Rosebay Willowherb also known as bomb weed or London’s Pride. Barely known in Britain before the nineteenth century, it thrived on lands disturbed by industrialisation or, as here, by fire and high explosives.

The skyline has been reclaimed by Wren. The willowherb adds some ghostly steeples too. On the left, the spire of St Mary-le-Bow which somehow endured the night of 10th May 1941 when the rest of the church succumbed. The tower acted as a flue and flames from the main body leapt up destroying its wooden floors and bringing down the famous bells. It was the fourth incarnation of St Mary (the first heavily damaged by tornado in 1091) but the original Norman crypt survives and is now a café. It was Wren’s most expensive parish church with his grandest tower. According to legend all cockneys have to be born within earshot of the bells. This once included Hackney Marshes but urbanisation has reduced their furthest reach now to Shoreditch. Probably the world’s most famous peel, it rang again in December 1961 some twenty years after its fall.

On the right of centre, St Mary Aldermary a name signifying the church’s primacy among St Mary dedications in the city. Other St Mary’s parishes such as the one above are thought to have been carved out of hers. Legend has it that reconstruction after the Great Fire was paid for by a rich widow on the proviso that the new church should be identical to that which had burnt down. According to the Buildings of England, however, it was stipulated in the will of a Henry Rogers that his fortune should be spent on the restoration of a city church without specifying a candidate. His daughter chose St Mary Aldermary and it was the amount of material left undamaged by the fire that resulted in the new church mimicking the old, thus we get Wren’s only Tudor Gothic design. In the Blitz the glass was lost but little further damage was sustained.

The black brick tower further right belongs to St. Mildred, Bread Street shorn of its elegant lead covered wooden spire. As its site was hemmed in and the outside barely visible, Wren chose to focus on the interior which featured a domed plaster roof supported onto the square nave by four highly decorated pendentives. The panelling was mainly original and of such quality that it was attributed to Grinling Gibbons. With few additions in the intervening years the church had Wren’s most unspoilt interior. Following its destruction, the Bishop’s Commission didn’t favour restoration and the site was sold off. The church and the first century Roman house found beneath it are now covered by 30 Cannon Street.

Thanks to the devastation, the ECKO radio advert alongside it reached a wider audience. The building on the extreme right is the tower of St. Nicholas Cole Abbey.

Twenty-one of the city churches were damaged in some way ranging from ‘trifling’ through to total destruction. The actual state of the buildings was somewhat masked by propaganda, perhaps exaggerating the scale of devastation to further blacken the image of the Nazis. The immediate danger was further collapse and hence churches that had surviving walls suffered additional privation.

With first Blitz effectively over, Geoffrey Fisher, Bishop of London set up the Commission on City Churches which first sat in October 1941. Its remit was:

To inquire into and consider questions of policy concerning the churches in the City of London in relation to general problems of reconstruction after the present war having regard to their spiritual function, to their historical and architectural claims, to their place in the life of the City and to other relevant factors and in connection with such consideration to examine (a) the working of the City Church Fund; (b) the sources and distribution of the income of the City Livings.

The commission comprised a mixture of church officials, cultural leaders, architects and bankers. Parishes at risk of losing their church petitioned the commission for reconstruction, St Andrew by the Wardrobe gathered one thousand signatures. In other cases, the clergy themselves were lukewarm about rebuilding. At Christchurch, Newgate Street, the vicar didn’t think it could be justified as there was little congregation to serve.

However, these viewpoints were largely ignored - it was clear that the Bishop and the commission did not want interference in the decision-making process or indeed the overall plans for the City’s resurrection. Also, aesthetic and historical values rather than religious ones guided the list for reconstruction. Wren churches (except those destroyed or damaged beyond repair) were to be retained plus the few medieval examples that had survived the first Great Fire.

Funding for each church was to allow a ‘plain’ restoration without unnecessary ornamentation. There were however exceptional cases where for artistic or historical reasons the ornamentation was restored as well. To have restored every church to its pre-blitz condition would be seen as indulgent during a time of austerity and rationing.

The destroyed Wren church St. Stephen’s Coleman Street was deemed unworthy of restoration. In a nineteenth century guide to City churches, George Godwin described it ‘as nothing more than a low room’ with ‘awkward galleries’ supported on blue painted iron columns ‘which give a mean appearance to the whole edifice’. So, devoid of aesthetic or historic value its fate was sealed and was due to become a church institute but it was covered by office blocks though its churchyard survives.

By contrast, another St. Stephen’s on Walbrook was considered Wren’s masterpiece and would qualify for the full works. St. Bride’s, Fleet Street. had historic associations with the adjacent newspaper industry. All Hallows Barking, originally discarded but then reprieved due to its connection with the founder of the worldwide Christian organisation Toc H.

There were those who thought that the churches should stay as ruins. In 1944 a number of notable artistic and intellectual figures headed by Kenneth Clark and including TS Eliot, John Maynard Keynes and Julian Huxley wrote a letter written to The Times arguing that:

The time will come – much sooner than most of us today can visualise – when no trace of death from the air will be left in the streets of rebuilt London. At such a time, the story of the blitz may begin to seem unreal, not only to visiting tourists, but to a new generation of Londoners. It is the purpose of war memorials to remind posterity of the reality of the sacrifices upon which its apparent security has been built. These church ruins we suggest will do this with realism and gravity.

They also argued that the memorials of the Great War were somewhat soulless and detached. Using buildings that had actually suffered would provide more relevance.

The theme was picked up in a book ‘Bombed Churches as War Memorials’ (1945) featuring proposals for some churches by notable architects including Hugh Casson. He thought that these ruins could become places of sanctuary away from the bustle of London allowing relaxation and retreat albeit temporary.

The commission was reluctant to support such schemes even though one of its members Walter Matthews, Dean of St. Paul’s wrote the foreword to Casson’s book. The commissioners favoured sale of the sites beyond restoration to finance other church projects. Rebuilt churches in Casson’s view would be ‘lifeless reproductions’ as ‘boring as plaster casts in a museum’.

Ultimately the commission recommended that four church sites should be reused for other ecclesiastical purposes; eleven should be rebuilt or restored and five should be sold commercially.

Two city churches destined to become church institutes were eventually turned into gardens: St Dunstan-in-the-East and Christchurch Newgate Street. St.Dunstan’s has arguably achieved the goals of effective war memorial and sanctuary. Christchurch suffered further mutilation in 1974 when two walls succumbed to road widening. Fragments survive of two more churches. St Alban’s, Wood Street had featured as a scheme in Casson’s book but the surviving walls were demolished in the 1960s. The tower remains, isolated on a traffic island and now a private residence. St Mary Aldermanbury deemed to be of ‘secondary architectural interest’ was not rebuilt but its carcass was sold to Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri where it has become the National Churchill Museum to commemorate the location of his ‘Iron Curtain’ speech. Its foundations still lie exposed in a small park on Aldermanbury.

St Dunstan’s is barely visible amid the huge office blocks on Lower Thames Street perhaps enhancing its role as outdoor haven of peace. By contrast, three bombed churches in Germany feature prominently on their city skylines. In Berlin, the broken shard of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church tower dominates the manic Kurfürstendamm. The adjacent replacement fashioned in blue glass bricks forms a remarkable contrast. The elegant spire of Hamburg’s St Nicholas Church was once the tallest building in the world and still stands shorn of its church on the edge of the Aldstadt. Designed by George Gilbert Scott, in 1943 the spire inadvertently aided Hamburg’s destruction as Scott’s compatriots used it to guide them across the city where they created a firestorm. In Dresden, the Church of Our Lady had seemingly survived the infamous bombardment only to collapse two days later. For the rest of that century the stones lay where they had fallen serving as a stark war memorial and focal point for the peace movement in the heart of the city. Even before the end of the war, the citizens hoped it would be rebuilt and this wish was fulfilled by 2005 using much of the original material.