St Clement's, Eastcheap

St Clement, Eastcheap

St. Clement Eastcheap is a parish church in the City of London located on Clement’s Lane, off King William Street. Of Saxon foundation, St Clement’s was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666 and rebuilt by the office of Sir Christopher Wren.

History

St. Clement Eastcheap was the only church in the City of London (St Clement Danes is in the City of Westminster), dedicated to the fourth Pope Clement who, by tradition, met his martyrdom by being tied to an anchor and thrown into the Black Sea. He is a patron saint of sailors. Eastcheap survives as a street in the eastern part of the City, beginning 80 metres to the west of St. Clement’s. Until the 1880’s, Eastcheap extended into land now occupied by King William Street and was one of the main streets of medieval London. “Cheap” means market and Eastcheap was so called to distinguish it from Westcheap or Cheapside.

Clement’s Lane, the small thoroughfare on which the church is located, was named after the church.

A charter of 1067 by William I to Westminster Abbey mentions a church of St. Clement, which is probably St. Clement Eastcheap. The earliest surviving reference by name is as “St Clement Candlewickstrate” in a deed during the reign of Henry III. Other early documents refer to the church as “St Clement in Candlewystrate”, “St Clement the Little by Estchepe” and “St Clement in Lumbard Street”.

Thomas Fuller the Royalist churchman and historian, was briefly rector of St. Clement’s in 1647/8 before he was suspended. He was succeeded by Josias Alsopp, who remained rector until 1666. Samuel Pepys recorded in his diary on November 24, 1661:

Up early, and by appointment to St. Clement lanes to church, and there to meet Captain Cocke, who had often commended Mr. Alsopp, their minister, to me, who is indeed an able man, but as all things else did not come up to my expectations. His text was that all good and perfect gifts are from above.

According to John Strype, St. Clement was repaired and beautified in 1630 and 1633. All was destroyed in the Great Fire. The parish was combined with that of St Martin Orgar, across Eastcheap, in 1670. The appropriation, by the Corporation of London, of a strip of land from the west of the church to widen Clement’s Lane led to a dispute with the parish authorities, who claimed that the site was too small to accommodate the families of the combined parishes. This was resolved by adding annexing a 14ft. plot to the east of the church formerly occupied by the churchyard. Building began in 1683 and was completed in 1687 at a total cost of £4365.

John Carlos, complaining in the May 1840 edition of The Gentleman's Magazine about the proposed demolition of St Bartholomew-by-the-Exchange and St. Benet Fink (they were subsequently destroyed), wrote:

The sweeping design of destroying a number of City churches was mediated in….1834, and for the time arrested by the resolute opposition to the measure in the instance of the first church marked out for sacrifice, St. Clement Eastcheap, it may be feared is at length coming into full operation, not, indeed in the open manner in which it was displayed at that period, but in an insidious and more secure mode of procedure.

Literally dozens of City churches were destroyed over the following century, but St. Clement Eastcheap was not one of them.

In 1872, the prominent Gothic revival architect William Butterfield substantially renovated St. Clement’s to conform with contemporary High Anglican taste. This involved:

• removing the gallery from the south aisle
• replacing the 17th century plain windows with stained glass
• dividing the reredos into 3 pieces and placing the two wings on the side walls
• dismantling the woodwork to build new pews
• laying down polychrome tiles on the floor
• moving the organ into the aisle

In 1933, Sir Ninian Comper revisited the layout, moving the organ to its original position and reassembling the reredos behind the communion table, although before he did so, he had it painted in with figures in blue and gold.

St. Clement’s suffered minor damage from bombing in 1940. The damage was repaired in 1949-50 and again redecorated in 1968.

Today, St. Clement’s holds weekly services, as well being the base of the Players of St. Peters, a company devoted to performing medieval miracle plays.

Although nearby St Martin Orgar had been left in ruins by the Great Fire, the tower survived, and this was restored by French Huguenots who worshipped there until 1820. The ruins of the body of the church were removed later that decade when Cannon Street was widened. The tower remained until 1851 when it was taken down, and – curiously – replaced with a new tower. The new tower served as a rectory for St. Clement Eastcheap. It was converted into offices in the 1970’s and still survives on St. Martins Lane.

Oranges and Lemons

Oranges and Lemons/

Ring the bells of St. Clement’s

St. Clement Eastcheap advertises itself as the church referred to in the nursery rhyme. So too does St. Clement Danes, whose bells ring out the nursery rhyme three times a day.

There is a canard that the earliest mention of the rhyme occurs in Wynkyn de Worde’s “The demaundes joyous” printed in 1511. This small volume consists entirely of riddles and makes no allusion to bells, St. Clement or any other church.

According to Opie, the earliest record of the rhyme only dates to c.1744, although there is a square dance (without words) called “Oranges and Limons” in the 3rd edition of John Playford’s The English Dancing Master, published in 1665.

St. Clement Eastcheap’s claim is based on the assertion that it was close to the wharf where citrus fruit was unloaded. A perusal of a map of London shows that there were many churches, even after the Fire, that were closer to the Thames than St. Clement’s (St. George Botolph Lane, St Magnus the Martyr, St. Michael Crooked Lane, St Martin Orgar, St Mary-at-Hill, All Hallows the Great. All these would have been passed by a load of oranges and lemons making its way to the nearest market where citrus fruit was sold -–Leadenhall Market, passing several more churches on the way.

It seems more likely that the melody called ‘Oranges and limons’ precedes the poem and that St. Clements was selected for its approximate rhyme with ‘lemons’.

Building

St. Clement Eastcheap has an irregular plan. The nave is approximately rectangular, but the south aisle is severely tapered. The main façade is on the west, on Clement’s Lane, and comprises four bays. The main bay has a blocked pedimented round-headed window over the door. This is flanked by matching bays with two levels of windows. The tower to the south west forms the fourth bay. This is a simple square tower, with a parapet, but no spire. Each bay has stone quoins and is stuccoed, except for the upper levels of the tower where the brick is exposed.

A small churchyard remains to the east of St. Clement’s and is approached by a narrow alley along the church’s north wall. At the entrance of the alley is a memorial plaque to Dositej Obradovic, a Serbian scholar who lived next to the church. The churchyard is hemmed in by the backs of office buildings and contains tombstones whose inscriptions have worn away.

St Clement, Eastcheap Interior

The reredos is original, but was painted over in the 1930’s in a style reminiscent of Simone Martini. The outer panels depict the Annunciation while the central panel shows St. Clement and St. Martin of Tours, (the dedicatee of St. Martin Orgar).

Surviving from the 1872 Butterfield renovation are the polychrome floor and three stained glass clerestory windows on the north wall. These show SS. Andrew, Peter, Matthew, James the Great, James the Less and Thomas.

The organ case dates from 1696 and was built by Renatus Harris. It once contained the organ played by Henry Purcell’s son, Edward Purcell, who was organist at St. Clement’s until 1740.

Also noteworthy, are the 17th century pulpit made from Norwegian oak, topped with an hexagonal sounding board with a dancing cherub on each corner and a communion table, from the same period, with cherubs for legs.

While the marble font can be seen, its wooden cover is not on public display. This had a carved dove holding an olive branch surrounded with gilded flames. William Gladstone was said to have been so delighted by the piece, that he took his grandchildren to see it.

References

• Jeffery, Paul. The city churches of Sir Christopher Wren, Hambledon Press, 1996
• Cobb,Gerald. London city churches, B T Batsford Ltd., 1977
• Blatch, Mervyn. A guide to London’s churches, Constable, 1995
• Bradley, Simon & Pevsner, Nikolaus. The buildings of England: London 1: The city of London, Penguin Books 1997
• Heulin,Gordon. Vanished churches of the City of London, Guildhall Library Publications, 1996
• Clout, Hugh (ed.). The Times history of London, Ted Smart, 1999
• Opie, Iona and Peter (ed). The Oxford dictionary of nursery rhymes, Oxford University Press, 1997
• de Worde, Wynkyn. The demaundes joyous (facsimile), Gordon Fraser, 1971