London Society
Published: 2015-07-20
Total Pages: 52
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Excerpt from The London City Churches: Their Use, Their Preservation and Their Extended Use London in ancient times was most richly supplied with ecclesiastical buildings. Fitzstephen, biographer of Becket, who wrote during the reign of Henry II, says that there and in the suburbs were 13 churches attached to convents and 126 parochial ones; Peter of Blois, in a letter to the Pope at the end of the 12th century, puts the number in London at 120, while Fabyan in 1516 gives "the summe of the parysshe churchys" as 113. After the Reformation these parish churches mostly survived without much structural change except what was necessary through lapse of time, until in the great fire 86 were destroyed or badly injured. Fifty-one of them were rebuilt, 33 being made to serve for 2 parishes, while St. Mary-le-Bow did duty for 3. Of the churches that escaped the great fire, 21 in number, 8 still remain. Among these St. Bartholomew the Great forms a portion of the Priory church founded in 1123, to the nave of which, destroyed at the Dissolution, the lay people of the precinct previously had access. The church of St. Helen Bishopsgate had been partly occupied by nuns of the Benedictine order, the north aisle or nave having been theirs while the parishioners occupied the other. The remaining 6 are parochial churches of ancient foundation. Of these St. Andrew Undershaft and to a great extent St. Giles Cripplegate were reconstructed in the first half of the 16th century, while St. Katherine Cree, excepting the lower part of the tower, dates from 1628-30. Wren's City Churches. In rebuilding the City churches after the great fire, Sir Christopher Wren had a unique opportunity which he turned to marvellous account. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.