London's Churches and Cathedrals: 5 spectacular examples

London has an awe-inspiring collection of churches of every style and type. If you want to see a church built in any century out of the last 1,200 years, you can find one.

Choosing just 5 wonderful examples is not easy.

This article looks at three of the main religious buildings in London - Westminster Abbey, St. Paul's Cathedral, and Southwark Cathedral, and two early medieval central London churches as well; smaller, less well-known, but also beautiful, sanctified, and wonderful.

All of these churches are "places in which prayer has been valid".

All are Anglican establishments, that is, they are Church of England buildings. All are still used for regular services and prayer, and entrance to all is free. In the case of St. Paul's and Westminster, there is a fee for entering certain touristy-bits, but the main part is not charged for.

Westminster Abbey was built as a monastery on Thorney Island, a rise in the otherwise marshy and difficult to use land.

It was founded to be near, but also a rural refuge from, the City of London which lies to the east. It is suspected that the first Christian King of the East Saxons, Sebert, founded the West Monastery, and the earliest recorded date of the Monastery is in A.D. 785.

The Monastery was enlarged, remodelled, and improved by the ever-energetic Dunston, later canonised as St Dunston, who was Archbishop of Canterbury, in 960 A.D.

Edward the Confessor, the last but one King of Anglo-Saxon England, refounded the church. He ripped down the old one and dedicated years of his life, and a great deal of money, to building a new church on the site, dedicated to St Peter.

It was an enormous church and, unusually for Saxon churches, built of stone.

In the last 15 years of Edward the Confessor’s reign, 10% of the Crown’s entire income was spent on it.

It was consecrated in 1065 A.D., just before Edward the Confessor died, in early 1066. He was buried here, and his successor, King Harold, was crowned here in early 1066, as was William the Conqueror on Christmas Day 1066.

Since William the Conqueror, every King or Queen who has made it to being crowned has been crowned in Westminster Abbey. The exceptions are Edward V and Edward VIII, neither of whom was King long enough to be formally crowned.

Many Kings, Queens and royal relatives were also buried in Westminster Abbey until the George II.

In 1245, Henry III knocked down most of Edward the Confessor’s church, and rebuilt it in appointed Gothic style, heavily influenced by French cathedral architecture at the time. The only surviving part of Edward’s church was the nave.

The Norman style nave was not knocked down, but was rebuilt in about 1370.

The last main additions to the Cathedral were the western towers, designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor and built in the 1730s and 40s.

The choir stalls are from 1849, and the high alter and surrounds were remodelled in 1867.

Because the church was the centre of a monastic Benedictine community, the Abbey wasn’t the only building. There were many associated buildings for the running of the monastery, including the Deanery, Chapter House, Treasury and Parliament Office.

The Chapter House was originally where the Chapter of the monastery, or the monks who ran it, met to administer the monastery.

From 1377 A.D. until 1547, when the monasteries were dissolved, the House of Commons also held its meetings there.

The building is absolutely astonishing. Entrance to the main building is free, as it is for all churches, cathedrals and chapels of the Church of England. There are a series of chapels off from the main body of the church, and there is a fee for entering these.

The main chapels include the Chapel of Edward the Confessor, which contains the shrine of Edward the Confessor, the Anglo Saxon King who became a Saint. Although Saint shrines were once common as muck in England, many were destroyed either during the reformation or by the Puritans during the English Civil War and the Commonwealth in the 17^th century, and Edward the Confessor’s shrine is one of only 3 which remain in England.

As well as the shrine, the chapel contains the thrones and chairs used in royal coronations.

Henry VII’s chapel is one of the largest, and has a knave, 2 aisles, and 4 smaller chapels off it at the east end. It is an absolutely spectacularly beautiful chapel, and is covered in small Tudor roses. Elizabeth I and Mary I, King Henry’s daughters who had different mothers and never got on with each other in life, are buried in death for an eternity here, on the order of James I and James VI (Elizabeth I’s successor).

Other chapels include that of St Benedict, St Edmund, St Nicholas, St Paul, St Erasmus, St John the Baptist and St Islip. All are amazing and should certainly be seen.

An absolutely astonishing wealth of famous and important people have been buried in Westminster Abbey.

A few of the best known include the politicians William Pitt, Charles Fox and Wilberforce (who abolished slavery), Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dryden, Milton, Pope and Spencer, Dr Samuel Johnson, Dickens and the musicians Purcell and Handel.

Scientists also have their place, including Isaac Newton and James Watt.

Linked to the Abbey, is an ancient school. Westminster School has been running possibly since the monastery was founded, and it was established as the school which continues now in 1560 by Queen Elizabeth. Part of the school’s buildings are the monastic building which stand a post reformation use. Westminster School uses Westminster Abbey as its school chapel.

St Paul’s Cathedral is the seat of the Bishop of London, and is on Ludgate Hill in the City of London. It’s the highest point above sea level in the city.

The current-day building is from the 17^th century, designed by Sir Christopher Wren, and is counted as the 5^th St Paul’s Cathedral on the site.

The first St Paul’s Cathedral was a Saxon building in the City of Lundenwic in the early 7^th century.

The 2^nd was built at some unknown time, of wood, and burnt down in 962 A.D.

The 3^rd Cathedral built immediately after the fire, burnt in turn in 1087 A.D., along with the grave of the Saxon King Aethelred the Unready.

The 4^th St Paul’s, and the first to stand for more than 100 years or so, was a stone building built on the orders of William the Conqueror after the 1087 fire. It was a famous site for preaching throughout medieval and reformation times. It was burnt in the Great Fire of London in 1666.

Sir Christopher Wren, the amazing and prolific architect of the 17^th century, designed and built the current and 5^th Cathedral of St Paul. It was finished in 1708, although it had been in use for 10 years before this.

It is unlike any other church building in England from before the time it was built and at the time it was built. The large and amazing dome is perhaps the centre point.

The building is built of Portland stone, with the dome inspired by St Peter’s Basilica in Rome. It’s possible to climb stairs to the Whispering Gallery, a 100 feet above the main floor of the Cathedral.

If a person whispers against the wall of the Gallery of the dome, anybody holding an ear near to the wall anywhere else around the dome can hear the whisper. For some reason, only whispers work.

Everywhere around the Cathedral was destroyed during the Blitz, but St Paul’s Cathedral survived. Fire watchers attached to the Cathedral climbed over the dome to knock incendiary bombs off it which were melting the lead during the Blitz.

In September 1940, a time delay bomb hit the Cathedral and lodged in the roof. It was taken away and destroyed in the countryside. The detonation of this bomb would have wrecked the Cathedral; when it was exploded in a field it left a 100 foot deep crater.

The first of many famous people to be buried in the Cathedral was Christopher Wren. Above his tomb is written an inscription in Latin; in English, this means, "reader, if you seek his monument, look around you". ( Or, if you need Tube directions, it might mean, "reader, if you seek Monument Station, take the Central Line"....)

The American Memorial Chapel in front of the Apse honours American soldiers who died in or on their way to the United Kingdom during the Second World War, and names 28,000 such Americans. The Chapel was entirely paid for by donations from the British public.

It has been a site for several state funerals, including Admiral Nelson, the Duke of Wellington, and Sir Winston Churchill.

Although Kings and Queens are crowned in Westminster Abbey, they are occasionally married in St Paul’s. Most famously, the Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer were married here in 1981.

Memorial services were held for the 2001 attacks on New York, and the 2005 attacks on the London Underground, in St Paul’s.

There are a number of services in St Paul’s everyday, and choristers in the Church of England tradition are particularly renowned at St Paul’s.

St. Giles–without–Cripplegate is a city church, just outside the city wall, near Cripplegate. The ‘without’ in its name means that it was outside the main city walls.

It is one of the few medieval buildings in or near the City of London which survived the Great Fire of London in 1666.

The original foundation of St Giles was a wooden Saxon church in about 1010 A.D. As was common throughout England, the wooden church was knocked down and in 1880 A.D. or so was replaced by a stone Norman church.

That in turn was knocked down and right at the end of the 14^th century the current church, in perpendicular style, was finished.

The dedication is from the Middle Ages, and St Giles is the Patron Saint of cripples and beggars.

The name "Cripplegate" has nothing to do with disabled or injured people, but instead comes from an Anglo Saxon word ‘Cruple’, a covered passageway which ran from Cripplegate into the city. T

here is a section of surviving Roman wall near St Giles.

A bomb hit St Giles during the Blitz in the Second World War, in June 1940. The church was restored and rededicated in 1952. Some blackened stonework has been left intact on the north wall in order to record the damage done by enemy action.

Much of the medieval church can still be seen, including the area where priests sat. The tiles used near the alter are Roman tiles which were reused when the building was constructed.

A number of famous church figures were connected to St Giles, including John Foxe, author of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. He is buried in the church.

Oliver Cromwell, who led the Commonwealth of England after the execution of Charles I and before the restoration of Charles II married in this church.

John Milton, who wrote Paradise Lost was a parishioner of the church and was living close by when he wrote and published Paradise Lost.

Very little known is about St Giles, a Saint whose Feast Day is the 1^st September. His origins is almost certainly mythical, but he may have been an Athenian convert who fled to France, lived as a hermit, and was then installed as head of a monastery by people impressed by his piety.

The Knights acquired a site to the south of High Holborn, called the New Temple, and built a large complex of buildings there.

There were dormitories, eating houses, a treasury, training grounds, stables, cook-houses, and a multitude of the other buildings needed to sustain a group of fighting monks.

The Temple Church was also built there, and was consecrated in 1185 in the presence of King Henry II, and Heraclius, Patriarch of Jerusalem.

Henry II attended the consecration of the Temple Church, and donated large sums and land to the order.

Henry III buried one of his sons there, and planned to be buried there himself (although he later changed his mind and was buried in Westminster Abbey instead).

The Temple Church was a round church from the beginning.

The Church has two main parts; the round church to the east, and the later rectangular addition to the west.

Until it was broken during renovation work in the late 17th century, an inscription above the door of the round church read:

On the 10th of February, in the year from the incarnation of our Lord 1185, this church was consecrated in honour of the blessed Mary by our lord Heraclius, by the grace of God patriarch of the church of the Resurrection, who hath granted an indulgence of fifty days to those yearly seeking it.

The styles of the two parts are quite different. The Round Church was built in the later Norman style, and is 55 feet in diameter. The arches and windows are a mixture of the round Norman style, and the early gothic pointed arches.

The rectangular part is pure Medieval gothic, with slender, pointed arches, and narrow columns.

The closest tube stations are Temple and Blackfriars (District and Circle lines), and Chancery Lane (Central line). Temple and Chancery Lane stations are both closed on Sundays. Holborn tube is also close (Piccadilly and Central lines).

For a lot more detail on the Temple Church and the whole presence of the Knights Templar in London, see this much more detailed article about the New Temple and Temple Church.

Southwark Cathedral has been a church for over 1000 years, but only a cathedral and centre of the Diocese of Southwark since 1905.

The Tudor historian John Stow compiled various verbal traditions suggesting there had been a community of nuns based on the current site of the Cathedral before William the Conqueror arrived in 1066. The nuns may have been there since about 650 A.D.

Swithun, Bishop of Winchester, replaced the nuns with a group of priests.

By the time of the Doomsday Book, the written record for the whole country compiled by William the Conqueror’s men in 1068 A.D., there was a church on the site.

In 1105 A.D, the church was refounded as a Priory of Augustinian monks. The church and Abbey were dedicated to St Mary the Virgin, and later became St Mary Overy, meaning St Mary across or over the river.

The Augustinian monks built a hospital next to their church, which continues on the site to this day as St Thomas’ Hospital.

Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries and St Mary Overy was one of them. The title in the church passed to the Crown, and was rented to the congregation of the parish. The parishioners bought it from King James I for £800.

In 1905, with the formation of the Diocese of Southwark, it became the Cathedral and Collegiate Church of St Saviour and St Mary Overie, more commonly known as Southwark Cathedral.

The church is a beautiful building, and an active centre of worship. It holds five services everyday as a minimum, and often more.

he Cathedral building is in Gothic architectural style, and the buildings now standing were mostly erected between 1220 and 1420, although building continued throughout the centuries and the latest buildings were finished in 2004.

The church was a frequent stopping point for Elizabethan dramatists. Shakespeare’s brother, Edmund, was buried here in 1607, and John Fletcher and Philip Massinger are buried in the church as well. It was the closest big church to Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre.

The Cathedral has substantial American connections. A gentleman called John Harvard who later set up a fairly well known university in America was a parishioner of the church.

Also buried in Southwark Cathedral is a Native American Chief who ended up dying in London and was buried in the Cathedral. The tomb includes various Native American spiritual symbols, which is unusual in a Christian church.

The architecture is stunning. The choir, sanctuary, aisles and knave date from between 1215 and 1283, and are an astonishing example of early English Gothic. The crossing dates from between 1380 and 1420, and the knave was rebuilt in Victorian times.

The whole Cathedral is set below ground below, as the ground level has risen and the Cathedral has stayed put. In an extremely busy area of London, it’s an oasis of calm. In many ways it is the most spectacular early Gothic building in London, and very well worth a look.

Getting to Southwark Cathedral is easy, as it’s very central. The nearest stations are London Bridge (Mainline trains Jubilee and Northern Lines) Monument (District and Circle Lines) and Bank (Docklands Light Railway).

A large number of buses also stop nearby. The closest is London Bridge, and the Cathedral is only about 3 minutes walk from there.

This article might well whet your appetite for more information about this wonderful city. If so, this article, details five fantastic family London activities which are free to do.

For a historical London perspective, you can read this hub about how English people coped with the Nazi bombs dropped during the Blitz.

London has wonderful public transport, by tube, train, tram, bus, cab and river, and you can get the details about finding your way around the city in this article.