St Matthew Friday Street
St. Matthew Friday Street | ||
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Style Baroque | | |
Demolished | 1885 |
St. Matthew Friday Street was a church in the
The middle ages
St.
The earliest surviving reference to the church is in a document from the reign of Henry III, as “St Matthew in Fridaistret”. A document from 1381–1382 refers to the church as “St. Matthew in Chepe”.
Seventeenth century
In 1631,
During this time, the rector of St. Matthew's was the puritan divine
St. Matthew's ties with the Dissenters survived the Restoration. By the Act of Uniformity 1662, the Book of Common Prayer was made compulsory in all churches. The churches minister Henry Hurst was ejected from the church.[1] In his diary entry on the day the Act came into effect, Sunday 24 August 1662, Samuel Pepys recorded a visit to his uncle's house for dinner, and recounted:
Among other things they tell me that there hath been a disturbance in a church in Friday Street; a great many young people knotting together and crying out "Porridge" often and seditiously in the church, and took the Common Prayer Book, they say, away; and, some say, did tear it; but it is a thing which appears to me very ominous. I pray God avert it.
"Porridge” was a Puritan term for the Book of Common Prayer.
Four years’ later, St. Matthew's, along with the great majority of the churches in the City, was destroyed in the Great Fire.[2]
Rebuilding after the Great Fire
The parish was combined with that of nearby St Peter, Westcheap which was not rebuilt, its site being retained as a graveyard, which survives today as a public space off Cheapside.[3] The Commissioners responsible for rebuilding the churches after the Fire contemplated moving St Matthew's to a more convenient location. This did not happen. Instead, the site of the church was augmented by a piece of parish land. Building commenced in 1682 and the church was complete by 1685, at a total cost of £2,309. In addition to this amount, the combined parishes paid Wren a gratuity of £3 8s.
St. Matthew Friday Street was the smallest and cheapest of the Wren churches. Its plan was an irregular rectangle; George Godwin described the interior as "a plain room of most uneven shape, about 60 feet long and 30 feet broad within the walls, with a plain flat ceiling, slightly coved at the sides.[4] There was a gallery at the west end with a small organ.[4] The exterior walls were of brick,[4] except for the east front, towards Friday Street, which was faced with stone. The east wall was unadorned at street level, but had a row of five round-headed windows with cherub-headed keystones above. The tower, in the south west corner, which was not visible from the street, was the plainest of any Wren church. It was plain brick and hung one bell. Entrance to the church was via alleyways to the north and south.
St. Matthew's communion table and Royal Arms are now in St. Vedast-alias-Foster, while the font and pulpit are in
Demolition
Due to the move of population from the City to the suburbs in the second half of the nineteenth century, the church became redundant and was demolished in 1885 under the
The
The section of Friday Street on which the church formerly stood was destroyed during the Second World War. The street was built over by the New Change Buildings in the 1950s, the site of St. Matthew's being in the courtyard. The site has since been redeveloped.
Organ
A new organ was built in 1762 by
Organists
- John Young 1735–1767
- Martin Rennoldson 1767–1802
- William Boyce 1802–1812
- John Cash 1812–1815
- Thomas Grady 1815–1817
- J.C. Webb 1818–1830
- Miss Lea 1830–1835
- Mrs Andrews 1836–1878
See also
- List of Christopher Wren churches in London
- List of churches rebuilt after the Great Fire but since demolished
References
- required.)
- ISBN 978-1405049245
- ^ "St Peter Cheap". London Gardens Online. Retrieved 8 May 2012.
- ^ a b c Godwin, George; John Britton (1839). "St Matthew, Friday Street". The Churches of London: A History and Description of the Ecclesiastical Edifices of the Metropolis. London: C. Tilt. Retrieved 18 March 2012.
Publications
- Cobb, Gerard "The Old Churches of London" Batsford,1942
- Jeffery, Paul. "The city churches of Sir Christopher Wren", Hambledon Press, 1996
- Huelin, Gordon. "Vanished churches of the City of London", Guildhall Library Publications, 1996