All Hallows Lombard Street

All Hallows Lombard Street was one of the City of London's most curious losses: a medieval parish church rebuilt by the office of Sir Christopher Wren after the Great Fire, so completely hemmed in by surrounding buildings that Victorians nicknamed it "the invisible church", and finally demolished in 1937 — yet not entirely destroyed, for its tower, porch and complete interior furnishings were carefully transported across London and rebuilt at Twickenham, where they survive to this day.

The church stood in Langbourn Ward, tucked behind the narrow buildings fronting both Lombard Street and Gracechurch Street, with its west and south sides facing into the cramped passage of Ball Alley. Its recorded history begins in 1054, when a London citizen named Brihtmerus granted the patronage to the prior and chapter of Canterbury Cathedral — a connection that endured for nearly nine centuries. The Elizabethan antiquary John Stow, surveying London at the end of the sixteenth century, knew the church as "All Hallows Grasse Church", explaining that the grass market once ran down that way "when that street was far broader than now it is" — the same market that gave neighbouring Gracechurch Street its name.

The medieval church was substantially rebuilt around the start of the sixteenth century. The south aisle was completed in 1516, while the Pewterers' Company paid for a north aisle and other improvements. A bell tower followed in 1544, incorporating a stone porch salvaged from the dissolved Clerkenwell Priory of the Knights of St John of Jerusalem. The priory's bells were purchased too, but the death of a benefactor meant they were never hung, leaving the tower with a single bell. After the Dissolution of the Monasteries the patronage passed to the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury.

The Great Fire of 1666 left All Hallows badly damaged but not utterly destroyed, and the parishioners spent years trying to save their old building — rendering the walls with straw and lime to arrest the decay, and even hanging a bell in the precarious steeple as late as 1679. Restoration ultimately proved impractical, and the medieval fabric gave way to a new church designed by Wren's office, completed in 1694 at a cost of £8,058 15s 6d — the equivalent of roughly £1.5 million today.

The exterior was deliberately plain, since almost nobody could see it. Writing in the 1830s, the architectural journalist George Godwin observed that the church was so enclosed by other buildings "that it is with difficulty discovered, even when looked for; it has in consequence been called 'the invisible church'." The stone tower, around 85 feet high, rose at the west end of the south wall in three storeys: the lowest contained a small porch of Corinthian columns carrying an entablature and pediment, the second had round-headed windows, and the third square louvred openings beneath a cornice and parapet — a composition that can still be inspected at Twickenham, where the tower was faithfully re-erected.

Inside, the church measured 84 feet by 52 feet and was a single undivided space without aisles, with a west gallery carried on a single column and a ceiling coved at the sides. Five windows lit the north side and four the south, though the east end was so dark that a skylight had to be cut into the ceiling in 1880. The walls were panelled in oak to a height of nine feet, and the woodwork was exceptional even by City standards. Above the north doorcase stood a wooden figure of Death, some four feet tall, with a matching figure of Time over the south door; the openwork carving above each was screened by "an artificial white curtain, likewise carved, but so natural that many have attempted to draw it on one side". The Corporation pew in the south-east corner bore two sword-rests, the churchwardens' high-backed seats were finished with the Lion and Unicorn, and the oak reredos carried a carved pelican and seven candlesticks. A frame of shelves in the vestibule held loaves for distribution to the poor. The organ, built by the great Renatus Harris in 1695, served until 1902, when Noble & Sons supplied a replacement. During the Napoleonic Wars a volunteer corps put the roof space to more warlike use as an ammunition store.

The church's most celebrated visitor was John Wesley, who according to the parish record book preached at Evensong on 28 December 1789. He recalled an earlier occasion when, about to enter the pulpit, he realised he had forgotten his sermon and confessed as much to the verger — who retorted, "What, cannot you trust God for a sermon?" Wesley preached extempore "with much freedom and acceptance", and never carried a manuscript into the pulpit again.

In 1879 ten bells from St Dionis Backchurch were hung in the tower, but no amount of optimism could disguise the steady emptying of the City's residential population. After the First World War the church was earmarked for demolition despite fierce opposition, and in 1937, having been declared unsafe, it was taken down. Wren's tower, the Clerkenwell porch and the complete furnishings were reused in the new church of All Hallows at Twickenham, which also received the bells. The little parish was united with St Edmund the King and Martyr, a short distance west along Lombard Street, and today forms part of the combined City parish of St Edmund the King and St Mary Woolnoth in the Diocese of London. The site itself disappeared beneath the large building at 20 Gracechurch Street and 2 George Yard, fronted by shops, though a parish boundary mark still survives in Lombard Street — the last visible trace of the invisible church.