A church was built in this location on the shores of the River Walbrook in the 7th century. A tributary of the River Thames, the Walbrook now flows through an underground pipe.
The present church, located about two blocks from St Mary Woolnoth, was built by Sir Christopher Wren after the Great Fire of 1666. The interior is regarded by many as Wren’s most beautiful work and one of England’s greatest buildings of any sort. Designed in part as an experiment for St Paul’s Cathedral, it is Britain’s earliest domed church. Within twenty years of its completion, the church was said to be famous all over Europe.
The 45-foot dome rests on eight arches supported by Corinthian columns. The exquisite plasterwork is covered with floral and other designs.
(As always, click on photos for larger views.)
Wren’s layout of the church was quite traditional: nave with aisles, chancel and crossing transept. The central dome placed over the traditional floor created a unique and complex architectural effect of graceful harmony with much light and space.
The church suffered significant damage in World War II. The dome was re-constructed in Wren’s original design by Godfrey Allen in 1951-52.
The effect of grace and harmony has been marred by the 1987 placement of Henry Moore’s white stone altar under the centre of the dome. The proposal to install the altar, shown at left, was so controversial that it occasioned a rare sitting of the Court of Ecclesiastical Causes Reserved.
In the early 1980s, the River Walbrook began seeping into the church’s foundations, threatening the dome. The effort to strengthen the foundation was led by Baron Peter Palumbo, who paid for the restoration. At the same time, supported by the rector, Lord Palumbo oversaw a re-ordering of the interior and commissioned Henry Moore (1898-1986) to sculpt an altar to replace the former communion table. Traditional pews were removed in favour of blond wooden benches facing the centre of the floor where Moore’s altar was to be placed. Critics of the altar likened it to a "ripe camembert cheese", which it does indeed resemble.
After theological and aesthetic objections to the interior re-design and the new altar were brought forward, the controversy was adjudicated before a church court. Initially, the court ruled against installation of the altar on the grounds that it departed from the concept of a communion table. In 1987, however, that decision was reversed by the Court of Ecclesiastical Causes Reserved, and Moore’s altar was finally installed.
The location of the altar goes against Wren’s longitudinal floor plan and converts a former preaching church oriented toward the pulpit into one centred around the altar. In the view of many, it is wrong for both theological and architectural reasons.
As architectural historian Gavin Stamp says,
In 1987, at the instigation of Peter Palumbo, a large circular altar of white marble by Henry Moore, weighing over ten tons, was installed directly under the dome of Wren's famous church of St Stephen Walbrook (requiring the gratuitous strengthening of the floor where there were once box-pews). When reluctantly accepting the commission, the sculptor was apparently told to imagine the sort of altar on which Abraham attempted to sacrifice his son Isaac–which is not exactly what the rubrics of the Anglican Church envisage for the celebration of Holy Communion. The resulting stone–once appropriately described as looking like 'a ripe Camembert'–is therefore liturgically absurd. It is also visually destructive as it wrecks the tension between the centralised space created by Wren and the longitudinal axis focussed on the original reredos and Communion table in a City church which, more than any other, deserves a full, coherent restoration.
Simon Jenkins agrees that the stone "looks wrong in this serenely grammatical architecture".
FWIW, I’m with the critics; I think the altar and the revised seating arrangement make a travesty of this magnificent and inspiring church.
This photo shows the carved canopied pulpit designed by Wren’s contemporary William Newman. As you can see, the benches immediately in front of the pulpit face away from it. It would appear that this church no longer thinks preaching is of central importance in corporate worship.
A photo of the church’s exterior with the tower "probably" completed by Nicholas Hawksmoor in 1717 is posted here. More photos are posted here.
The church apparently does not have its own web site. Here’s a street map showing the church’s location.
Links to all my blog posts about British churches and Christian sites can be accessed through the box located at the top of the page.
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