ISBN: 0 300 09655 0
Cheek by jowl with the banks and offices of the City of London are more than fifty churches, a
group of buildings without parallel anywhere in the world. This book explains their unique
history, with definitive descriptions of each one. Most famous are those designed after the Great
Fire of 1666 by Sir Christopher Wren and his office. Wren's steeples of St Bride Fleet Street and
St Mary-le-Bow (the church of the 'Bow Bells') still stand proud against the commercial skyline
of today, while the monuments of St Helen Bishopsgate testify to the pride and power of the
merchant princes of old London. Other jewels include the lawyers' early Gothic Temple Church
and England's one remaining eighteenth-century synagogue. The exceptionally rich fittings and
stained glass are described in detail, as is the painstaking reconstruction of those churches
damaged in the Blitz and recent terrorist attacks. Long-vanished churches are listed, and their
little known churchyards explored.
