All Hallows by the Tower

This is Mark Lane looking north; a soulless, sunless, narrow canyon. None of these buildings existed when I started working here in 1976.

A few buildings have escaped the rapacious developers, often working for livery companies, and most obviously churches are off limits. I should mention the flip side is how generous livery companies are to charities, etc funded in part by their City properties. At the south end of Mark Lane is All Hallows by the Tower, confusingly known as All Hallows Barking because it was founded from Barking Abbey in Essex circa 660. It is the oldest church in the City. Unlike many City churches it survived the Great Fire, indeed Pepys climbed up the tower. His diary for 3rd September 1666 reads “I up to the top of Barking steeple and there saw the saddest sight of desolation that I ever saw”. What would he make of Mark Lane today?

All Hallows was not so lucky in WW II and except for the outer walls was destroyed on the evening of Sunday 29th December 1940. When the rubble had been cleared this was what remained.

This is the interior today, or rather yesterday.

The most obvious alteration is the addition of a triforium. The pulpit is 17th century brought from a City church wrecked in the Blitz (St Swithin, Cannon Street) and not rebuilt and the tester is also an addition representing three shells associated with the Camino de Santiago. There is also this carved wooden statue of St James of Compostela depicting St James dressed as a medieval pilgrim. It is late 15th century and all I know is that it must be a relatively new acquisition as he is not mentioned in my ancient Pevsner.

There are two tomb-chests with recumbent bronze effigies. Unusually they are both 20th century.  One commemorates The Hon Alfred Forster, Lieutenant Royal Scots Greys, who died in 1919, aged twenty-one, of wounds sustained at the end of the war.

Four bronzes were created from the mould and Lord Forster wanted this one to have no inscription and to serve as a memorial to the fallen of the war. The other is of “Tubby”.

“The effigy of the Rev’d Philip Thomas Byard Clayton (popularly known as ‘Tubby’) is one of the last works by Cecil Thomas, the ‘soldier sculptor’, who also made the Forster Memorial. Tubby’s dog sits on a tasselled cushion at his feet and the effigy is supported by four lion cubs, one at each corner. He was vicar here for forty years, 1922 -1962.” (All Hallows website)

There is so much more of interest in this church, remarkable since it was destroyed in 1940. I will leave you with the crow’s nest from the Quest, the ship Sir Ernest Shackleton used on his last Antarctic voyage in 1921 – 1922. It looks like an old barrel but had radio communications and was heated – don’t ask me how.

It is a restoration like this, breathing life back into such an ancient church so successfully, that makes me hopping mad the National Trust will not restore Clandon Park. The NT, as I may have said before, have got too big for their boots. Their members pay about £800 million a year and, like me, they should express their disapproval by resigning. All Hallows did not get money from their insurers. The NT got £66 million when Clandon burnt down in 2015. The main rebel is Restore Trust but they are thwarted by the NT making voting simple for simple members by letting them “quick vote” en bloc for candidates to the Board proposed by the NT. A maverick candidate hasn’t a hope. The NT has abandoned its original purpose.