St Werburgh's Church, Derby

St Werburgh's Church on Friargate in Derby wears its long history in two distinct halves: a seventeenth-century tower and chancel cared for by the Churches Conservation Trust, and a grand Victorian nave that, after decades of closure and improbable secular careers, is once again a living church. The whole building is listed Grade II*, and it holds one famous claim on English literary history — it was here, on 9 July 1735, that Samuel Johnson was married.

The church is of medieval origin, though the oldest fabric now standing is the tower, rebuilt between 1601 and 1608 in a style architectural historians call Gothic Survival — Gothic built long after the Middle Ages had ended, by masons who simply carried on the old ways. The chancel followed in 1699. The rest of the medieval church survived until 1893–94, when it was entirely rebuilt in stone from Coxbench quarry to designs by Sir Arthur Blomfield, one of the most prolific church architects of the Victorian age, who worked in a Gothic Revival manner modelled on the fifteenth century.

The Johnson connection belongs to the older church. When the young Samuel Johnson — not yet "Dr Johnson", but a struggling twenty-five-year-old schoolmaster — married Elizabeth Porter here in 1735, the match raised eyebrows on both sides: "Tetty" was a well-to-do widow of forty-six, and neither family approved. The marriage nonetheless endured until Elizabeth's death in 1752, and Johnson mourned her for the rest of his life. The tower today contains a chapel named the Johnson Chapel in memory of the wedding.

The converted chancel of 1699 preserves a remarkable ensemble of original fittings. Its greatest treasure is an elaborate wrought-iron font cover by Robert Bakewell, the celebrated Derby ironsmith whose work adorns the city's cathedral. The reredos carries panels inscribed with the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer and the Apostles' Creed beneath the royal arms of Queen Anne; the stained glass is from the studio of Charles Eamer Kempe, and there is a monument of 1832 by the great sculptor Sir Francis Chantrey. On the chancel wall hangs a war memorial by Arthur George Walker — a cast-bronze figure of Christ with arms outstretched above a plaque naming forty-seven men of the parish, inscribed "Remember 1914–1918 / Blessed are the Peacemakers". The church's 200-year-old clock failed in 1938 and was replaced with a new one by John Smith of Derby, the city's venerable clockmaking firm. An organ stood here as early as 1750; its successors included a John Gray instrument of 1841 and a Walker and Sons organ of 1872, enlarged by Henry Willis & Sons in 1905 into a four-manual instrument of forty-seven speaking stops, before being sold in 1989.

The twentieth century nearly ended the church's story. St Werburgh's closed for worship in 1984 and its parish merged with St Alkmund's; memorials were moved into the chancel, windows by Kempe and Herbert William Bryans went to All Saints' Church at Turnditch, and in 1990 the building was declared redundant. The tower and chancel passed to the Churches Conservation Trust in 1989 — the tower was refurbished in 2004, and its key is kept at the nearby Derby Museum and Art Gallery. The great Blomfield nave, meanwhile, was converted to commercial use, serving over the years as an indoor market and a Chinese restaurant before standing empty for seven years.

Then came an unexpected resurrection. On 17 September 2017 the main church reopened for worship as part of the Holy Trinity Brompton network, the church-planting movement that has revived redundant buildings across England. Today the two halves of St Werburgh's lead parallel lives — connected but without internal access between them — the historic tower and chancel preserved as a monument, and the main church filled on Sundays with morning and evening congregations worshipping in a contemporary style, in the building where Dr Johnson once made his vows.