Comments on: The City Churches of Old London

By: keith kelly

keith kelly — Sat, 05 May 2018 13:49:04 +0000

I wonder what the “France Surprise” was that the newsboy was selling at the bottom.

By: Jim Short

Jim Short — Sat, 13 Aug 2016 13:46:26 +0000

My wife and I were regular attendees at St Alfege Church in Greenwich while living there from Australia in the late 1990s. It is a Hawksmoor church, built in the early decades of the 1700s. It has wonderful character and a feeling of spirituality. As well, the site has a history going back a millenium, to when Alfege, the then Archbishop of Canterbury, was murdered there by the Saxons in 1012.

By: Mike Charlton

Mike Charlton — Fri, 30 Jan 2015 22:21:53 +0000

London, city of spires. Which came first, St Bride’s spire or the now-traditional layered wedding cake? My money’s on the spire. Whenever I used to get to a higher point around London, my eye was always drawn to the spires of the churches, in amongst the modern glass, metal and concrete buildings. There’s something more organic about them, compared to the twentieth and twenty-first century architecture.

By: Paul Seed

Paul Seed — Sun, 26 May 2013 21:03:04 +0000

How the world changes. When the origianl churches were built they were seen as massive structures, towering over the one- and two-story houses of (what we now call) mediaeval London. Even when the city and the churches were rebuilt after the Great Fire, they would have been the dominant structures in their little areas. Now they “maintain a human scale…” against the glass towers of the modern city.

By: Cherub

Cherub — Thu, 09 May 2013 16:30:29 +0000

Wren did such beautiful churches, I loved them when I worked in London. On my recent visit they made my heart feel glad. I hadn’t been to London for 9 years and was more impressed by these old churches than the new futuristic landmarks!

By: Good Gentlewoman

Good Gentlewoman — Thu, 09 May 2013 15:11:58 +0000

My great-great grandparents had several children baptised at St Clement Danes. Lovely to see these old views.

By: Mick

Mick — Tue, 07 May 2013 20:15:29 +0000

All done properly with an architectural camera with lens movements….not an uncorrected vertical in sight!

By: Gary

Gary — Tue, 07 May 2013 19:38:08 +0000

Seeing the horse dung on the streets in some of those slides reminds me of my childhood.
It was not an unpleasent smell, pleasently earthy.
Many were the times when I was despatched out with a bucket and shovel to get to it before any other child. Only organic home grown food in those days.
Gary

By: Peter Holford

Peter Holford — Tue, 07 May 2013 16:29:06 +0000

Great photos as ever. These are now seeming closer to how I remember London as a child than the present landscape – perhaps I’m getting older!

By: CornishCockney

CornishCockney — Tue, 07 May 2013 10:36:34 +0000

So many, like St Brides, and the Monument, you can now only see when you’re right there upon them!
While I like the skyscrapers and how they are defining our citys landscape, I do love seeing the old views with church spires rising above the city.