London's Great Medieval Survivor

How one modest church tower survived war, fire and developers

Croeso (or Welcome), to another edition of ‘A Chronicle of Dragons & Cats’, and thank you for reading! If you have already subscribed, diolch yn fawr for coming along on this journey and I hope you’re enjoying. Any likes, comments and shares are always appreciated. It’s not easy getting history out to the masses at the moment!

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I recently had cause to be cycling around the City of London, the oldest (and yet, looking at the buildings, very much the shiny newest) part of the wider global metropolis known all around the world. The Square Mile, as its colloquially known, whose boundaries stretch only from St Paul’s Cathedral in the west to the Tower of London in the east, is a fascinating place to explore.

Glimpses of its Roman foundation, medieval grandeur, and Victorian slum are few and far between these days, though the street names do tell a story in themselves – think of Cheapside, Pudding Lane, Threadneedle Street, Poultry, Lombard Street, Ropemaker Street, Ironmonger Lane and many more.

I love the present City, with its array of oddly shaped and funnily-named skyscrapers (the Walkie Talkie or the Cheesegrater anyone?) contrasting wonderfully with William the Conqueror’s iconic White Tower, London’s once tallest building for half a millennia now scarcely visible unless near the river. It’s easy to mourn the lost past, particularly as a historian, but there’s something stimulating about the frenetic pace of the City, a daily reminder that the cost of progress in this age of rampant capitalism is substantial. Though, of course, the Blitz during World War II helped clear much of the medieval remnants.

Anyway, I was racing past Fenchurch Station when I spotted something that caused me to ground to an immediate halt, the screeching tyres, the squeak of the brakes and the expletives of an irked black cabbie somewhere to my rear ringing in my ears. A lonely church tower, unmistakeably medieval, standing alone in the heart of a bustling construction site, intense digger operators navigating their thunderous loaders back and forth under the watchful gaze of their orange-clad helmeted colleagues. Dust kicked up everywhere, the racket grating with every beep and clang, but that WAS a medieval church, was it not?

It was, dear reader. Welcome to All Hallows Staining, a church (well, tower), that I have decided is one of London’s most defiant structures, one which has survived plaque, the Great Fire, the Blitz, and now, it seems, the dreaded Developers. A church has been recorded on this spot since at least the twelve century, and it was given the name Staining to differentiate it from other All Hallows’ in the area, including one barely a minute’s walk away known as All-Hallows-by-the-Tower, which is self-explanatory really. Staining (from Stane) is a reference to its stone construction, suggesting others in the area must have been primarily wooden.

The battlemented tower which can still be seen (as shown by sticking my phone through the metal protective hoardings!) likely dates from around 1320 and the reign of Edward II. This would have been a regular sight to thousands of Londoners across the rest of the medieval period, including one would have to believe the various kings that reigned.

It is recorded that when William Wallace, he of Braveheart fame, was brought to London as a prisoner he was lodged in the house of William de Leyre, a citizen of the parish of All Hallows Staining, so perhaps one of the final things this obdurate Scottish leader saw was the tower we still see all these years later.

According to the architect Thomas Milbourne meanwhile, writing in The Architect in 1870 ahead of its expected demolition, upon her release from the Tower of London on 19 May 1554, the Princess (and later queen) Elizabeth attended a service at All Hallows, after which she gave a generous gratuity to the clerk. Another tradition says she decamped to the nearby King’s Head pub afterwards for a meal of pork and peas. In an account written in the Gentleman’s Magazine in 1790, it was even that on the anniversary of her birthday each year, some people went to the tavern to enjoy the same meal in commemoration. Indeed, on the famous 1550s Copperplate Map of London, All Hallows can be clearly seen along Fenchurch.

The church itself, like the tower, survived the Great Fire only to collapse a few years later in 1671. It was rebuilt, but by 1870 was scheduled for complete demolition when the Worshipful Company of Clothworkers Livery Company intervened to rescue the church, or rather, the tower – the rest of the building was pulled down as intended. Below is a drawing of the church tower in the Illustrated London News for 1870.

Now a Grade I Listed building as of 1950 and therefore, in theory at least, safe from the whims of destructive policies and overeager architects, All Hallows Staining is about to be engulfed again by the march of steel and glass progress, swallowed up even further by behemoths which truly tower over the streets below. 50 Fenchurch Street will be a colossal new office block that will encompass All Hallows into its design, providing fresh public access to the old tower.

Just like the redoubtable young princess and future queen that once allegedly prayed here, what a remarkable survivor this tower is. If you ever have reason to be around Fenchurch Street, do check it out!

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