St Mary-at-Hill

St Mary-at-Hill is a Church of England parish church in the Ward of Billingsgate in the City of London, its entrance on Lovat Lane, a cobbled street off Eastcheap, hidden among some of the City's most ancient lanes. On the street called St Mary at Hill, a large double-faced clock extends several feet out over the pavement, offering the best view of the church's elegant exterior. Founded in the twelfth century as "St Mary de Hull" or "St Mary de la Hulle", the church takes its name — in the words of John Stow, writing at the end of the sixteenth century — from "the ascent from Billingsgate": "the fair church of Saint Marie, called on the Hill". Following the closure of three neighbouring churches its full parish title is now "St Mary-at-Hill with St Andrew Hubbard, Eastcheap; St George, Botolph Lane; and St Botolph by Billingsgate", and the Anglican congregation shares the building with the congregation of St Anne's Lutheran Church.

The church's history may run older than its name suggests: a document of 1177 refers to an "ancient" church on the site, implying a foundation in the eleventh century or earlier. In 1336 one Rose Wrytell paid to establish a chantry; the north aisle was rebuilt at the end of the fifteenth century, with a south aisle and steeple added a little later. The church's medieval records, surviving from 1420 to 1559, are among the most studied of any London parish, and its musical pedigree is extraordinary: the organ-builder Mighaell Glocetir worked here from 1477 to 1479 — possibly the same craftsman as the Myghell Glancets recorded at St Michael, Cornhill in 1475 — the choir of the Chapel Royal sang here from 1510, and the composer Thomas Tallis, the father of English church music, was organist at St Mary-at-Hill in 1538–39.

The Great Fire of 1666 began in the neighbouring street of Pudding Lane, and St Mary's was severely damaged; afterwards its parish was united with that of St Andrew Hubbard, whose church was never rebuilt. Sir Christopher Wren rebuilt the interior and east end while managing to retain the medieval walls on the other three sides, along with the west tower, to which he added a lantern. His design included a Venetian window at the east end, now blocked, and a pediment, now broken; inside, four free-standing Corinthian columns support barrel vaults in a Greek cross pattern beneath a coffered central dome — one of the earliest domed church interiors in England, in a church 96 feet long and 60 feet wide. In the eighteenth century a hoard of coins, now known as the Mary Hill Hoard, was found in a basement nearby; it included the only known example of a coin from the Horndon mint.

The fabric has been much altered since. In 1787–88 George Gwilt rebuilt the west wall and replaced the tower in brick; in 1826–27 James Savage installed round-headed iron-framed windows in the north wall and renewed the vaults, ceilings and plasterwork, adding a cupola to the dome and cutting windows through the chancel vault in 1848–49. In 1849 the seventeenth-century woodwork was sympathetically augmented and adapted by W. Gibbs Rogers. When the parish absorbed St George Botolph Lane in 1904 (itself already united with St Botolph Billingsgate), St Mary-at-Hill received that church's sword rests, plate, royal arms, ironwork, organ and organ case. A William Hill organ had been installed in 1848. The thriller writer Dornford Yates set part of his 1939 novel Gale Warning in the church, thinly disguised as "St Ives", making use of the open-work screens on the roof. Adjacent on the street stands a Grade II listed brick and stone rectory of 1834, designed by Savage and incorporating a late seventeenth-century vestry.

John Betjeman, writing before 1988, called St Mary-at-Hill "the least spoiled and the most gorgeous interior in the City, all the more exciting by being hidden away among cobbled alleys, paved passages, brick walls, overhung by plane trees". The church had survived the Blitz unscathed — only to be severely damaged by fire in 1988, which destroyed the roof and ceiling. Redundancy was at first proposed, but a full restoration was soon promised, and the roof, plaster vaults and dome were rebuilt in 1990–91. Most of the interior fittings and woodwork survived the fire — yet in a continuing London heritage saga, the fine pulpit, reredos and other furniture have never been reinstated, remaining in storage for decades despite pressure from preservationists and the Georgian Group, leaving the restored interior an austere shell of Wren's geometry. The William Hill organ was partly restored after the fire, with complete restoration begun in 2000, and the church is now a popular venue for regular concerts and recitals. It was designated Grade I on 4 January 1950.

The church's traditions are woven into City folklore. Every October it hosts the Costermongers' Festival — also called the "Fish Harvest Festival" or "Harvest of the Sea" — a thanksgiving associated with the great fish market that stood at Billingsgate below the hill. The parish account books also testify to the ancient ceremony of Beating the Bounds, in which notables and children processed around the parish boundary on Ascension Day carrying slender rods — originally the children themselves were (not severely) whipped at points along the route; four shillings were paid for fruit on the day of the "Perambulation" in 1682. When Parliament outlawed new burials in the City in the Victorian era, the parish purchased burial rights "in perpetuity" in 1847 in a railed, monkey-puzzle-planted section of West Norwood Cemetery; the London Borough of Lambeth compulsorily purchased the cemetery and removed the memorials in 1990–91, an act a Chancery Court later found illegal, ordering a mechanism for restoring the monuments at descendants' request.

The roll of people connected with St Mary-at-Hill spans five centuries: the hymn writer Richard Beearde, rector from 1560 to 1574; Cuthbert Buckle, Sheriff and later Lord Mayor of London, buried here in July 1594; the poet Edward Young, author of Night Thoughts, married here in 1731; the antiquarians John Brand, appointed rector in 1784, and William Turner Alchin, born in the parish in 1790, along with the translator and author Sarah Elizabeth Utterson, born here in 1781; Wilson Carlile, founder of the Church Army, a minister here around the turn of the twentieth century; and Rose Hudson-Wilkin, priest-in-charge and Chaplain to the Speaker of the House of Commons, who in 2019 became Bishop of Dover — the first black woman consecrated a bishop in the Church of England. From Tallis to Hudson-Wilkin, the fair church on the hill above Billingsgate remains one of the City's best-kept secrets.