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This is a lovely little church, perhaps not so well-known
as some of the other City churches, but with a quirky
history and one great surprise on entering. It sits on
College Hill, just to the north of Upper Thames Street
from which it was once separated by buildings, but the
site of them now forms a garden. This was Dick
Whittington's church, and by a bequest of 1409 he had the
church rebuilt with a college of Priests. His will of
1423 states that he should be buried in 'St Michael de
Paternoster-church in Riola', this last word probably
referring to the wine merchants of La Reole in Bordeaux
who had their import warehouses near to the church. The church was rebuilt by the Wren workshop
after the Great Fire, and the spire was probably
Hawksmoor's design. It underwent considerable Victorian
restoration, by Butterfield in 1866 and Ewan Christian in
1894. The church suffered considerable blast damage
during the Blitz, but most of the furnishings survived
and those that didn't were augmented from store, mostly
from All Hallows the Great which had been nearby. It was
not considered a priority for restoration (when Wayland
Young visited in 1955, almost fifteen years after the
Blitz, he found the nave covered by a corrugated iron
roof) and it was not until 1968 that the repaired church
was opened to the design of Elidir Davies, the last
church in the City to be restored.
The great surprise on entering the
church is that it has what is probably the singularly
best post-war glass in the City, a scheme by the great
John Hayward depicting the angels of Genesis and the
Apocalypse - and, best of all, a flat-capped Dick
Whittington and his wily cat in the south-west corner.
Simon Knott, December 2015
location: College Street, 3/049
status: guild church
access: open Monday to Friday
                      
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