London City

by Walter Besant

ST. STEPHEN, WALBROOK

St. Stephen, Walbrook, stands at the back of the Mansion House. It was formerly often called St. Stephen-upon-Walbrook, from the fact that its first site was actually upon the bank of the stream so named. There is only one other church in the City dedicated to St. Stephen, viz. St. Stephen, Coleman Street. The date of its foundation is not known, but it dates back at least as far as the reign of Henry I.; Eudo Dapifer’s gift of it to his Abbey of St. John, Colchester, in 1096, being the earliest reference to it. It was rebuilt early in Henry VI.’s reign, chiefly through the agency of Robert Chicheley, Lord Mayor in 1411 and 1421. It was totally consumed by the Fire, and rebuilt by Wren in 1672, when the neighbouring parish of St. Benet Sherehog was annexed. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1315.

The patronage of the church was in the hands of: Eudo, Steward to Henry I., who gave it to the Abbot and Convent of St. John, Colchester, who held it up to 1422; John, Duke of Bedford, who sold it in 1432 to Sir Robert Whytingham, Knt., who gave it to Richard Lee in 1460, who gave it in 1502 to the Grocers Company, in whose successors it continued.

Houseling people in 1548 were 250.

This church is, after St. Paul’s Cathedral, considered Wren’s masterpiece. It is oblong in shape, traversed by four rows of Corinthian columns, which divide it into five aisles, of which the central is the broadest; it is crowned by a circular dome supported on eight arches. The effect thus produced of the circle springing from an octagonal base is especially graceful. The building measures 82½ feet in length, 59½ feet in width, and the height to the dome is 63 feet, to the ceiling of the side aisles 36 feet. The tower contains four stories; upon it the steeple is placed, tapering to a spirelet with finial and vane; the total height is about 130 feet. Against the wall of the north transept is a picture of St. Stephen being carried from the scene of his martyrdom; this is by Benjamin West, P.R.A., and is generally considered his best work; it was presented by the rector, Dr. Wilson, and put up in 1776, though it then stood over the reredos.

Chantries were founded here: By Lettice Lee, whose endowment fetched £14 : 10s. in 1548; by William Adams, who left £126 : 13 : 4 as an endowment for a priest to sing for his soul “as long as the money would endure”—this in 1548 was in the hands of one named Myller of Lynn, Norfolk.

The church originally contained a monument in memory of Sir Thomas Pope, the founder of Trinity College, Oxford. The oldest monument is one in memory of John Lilbourne, citizen and grocer of London, who died in 1678. On the north wall two physicians are commemorated—Nathaniell Hodges, who wrote a treatise on the Plague, and died in 1688; and Percival Gilbourne, who died 1694. In 1726 Sir John Vanbrugh the architect was interred here; he was also a playwright.

Pictorial Agency.
ST. STEPHEN, WALBROOK

According to Stow, the parish possessed £100 per annum, employed in repairing the church, etc., the exact uses of which were unknown. He records a legacy of £20 per annum for charitable uses left by one named Dickenson.

Henry Chicheley, L.L.D. (d. 1443), Archbishop of Canterbury, was a rector here; also Thomas Wilson (1703-84), author of the History of St. Margaret’s; John Kite (d. 1537), Archbishop of Armagh; and Thomas Howell (1588-1646), Bishop of Bristol.

The Church of St. Stephen stood on the west side of the original course of Walbrook stream. Over the new course of the stream a “covering” or small bridge was made for access to the church, and in 1300 the parishioners were found, by inquisition before the mayor, to be under the obligation of repairing it. Little is known of this building; that it possessed a belfry is shown from an entry in the coroner’s roll of 1278, which records the death of one William le Clarke, who, having gone pigeon-nesting in the belfry, accidentally fell as he was climbing the beams, and so ruptured and crushed his body on one of them that he died. The fatal beam was thereupon “appraised at four pence, and two neighbours nearest to the church were attached, each by two sureties, to see the fine or deodand paid” (Riley’s Memorials of London, p. 13).

The “parsonage house,” before the Great Fire, stood, Stow tells us, on the site of the first church, next to the course of the Walbrook. It was rebuilt by one Jerome Raustorne (or Rawstorne) upon a lease of forty years, commencing 1674, and by this, Newcourt says, was “reserved to the parson £17 a year ground-rent.” The parish at this time enjoyed an income of £100 a year, and with part of this, supplemented by sums of money received from leases, and from compensations for encroachments and new “lights” made upon the churchyard at the rebuilding of the City after the Fire, the Vestry determined to build a new rectory house. The leave of the Grocers Company, as patrons, and a faculty from the Bishop of London, dated 1692-93, having been obtained, the new house was built (between 1693 and 1708) adjoining the west end of the church by the tower on a piece of ground, about 20 feet square, previously occupied by a portion of the ante-Fire edifice. It was considered that the rector had a title to some portion of the ground, and to half the compensation money paid for new lights, and accordingly it was provided that in case the rector or any of his successors should find it inconvenient or inadvisable to live in the house, then the Vestry should let the same from year to year, the parish to have two-thirds of the rental, and the remaining third to go to the rector. This house is still standing, but is let out for offices, the rector living at Brockley. It is a quaint and small house, which almost touches the church wall at the back. Two of its rooms stand over the church porch. The original staircase and panelled walls remain. It is the only old house standing on the east side of Walbrook. The churchyard is situated at the east end of the church. It has a round flower-bed in the centre, two trees, and several bushes, and is kept in excellent order. It is entered from Church Row by an iron gate, and from the church by the door in the east wall.

The Mansion House occupies the sites of Stocks Market and St. Mary Woolchurch Haw.