St Giles In The Fields

St Giles In The Fields is certainly a site of contrasts. To begin with, there have been no proper fields in this area of high urban density for a long time, unless one counts the large but somewhat shabby-looking churchyard, so the name is in conflict with the reality.

The second noticeable contrast is the building itself. Its facade is a triumph of Palladian majesty, striking loftily above the bustle of the West End, but the high, rectangular building behind the facade is sombre brownstone, with rows of small windows that put one in mind of a Victorian workhouse.
The last contrast is the impression conveyed by the interior. Walking into St Giles leaves the visitor breathless at its beauty, not least because it is so unexpected. The sheer scale of it leaves your lower jaw sagging. Large, ornate chandeliers, gilded patterns on the white ceiling, galleries with imposing arcades. This place looks as though it were designed to be a palace, not a parish church... and yet this site, with all its impressive architectural features, its glorious fittings, its colourful array of monuments to the great and good of the parish, has more dark moments in its history than most of the other London churches put together.

Its history begins in the year 1101 when Matilda of Scotland, Queen to Henry the First, founded a leper hospital on the site. Not an auspicious start, you might think, and you'd be right - this was not to be the last time in its history that the parish was connected with pestilence. The hospital had a chapel, which was most probably used by local villagers as a church, although one cannot imagine too much mingling with the inmates.

Little seems to be known about this medieval phase of the site's history (other than the fact it was probably surrounded by fields!), apart from an event during the reign of Henry the Fifth, an event which was to be the prelude to St Giles' later connection with condemned prisoners: the story of Sir John Oldcastle.
Oldcastle was a leader of the heretical religious movement known as the Lollards. Originally a friend of Henry the Fourth, and companion of the future Henry the Fifth during his campaigns in the Welsh Marches, Oldcastle fell from favour when his religious leanings were discovered and he refused to renounce them. Convicted of heresy, he managed to escape from the Tower and start an uprising, easily dispersed, at St Gile's Field. Fleeing to Herefordshire, Oldcastle remained at large - and plotting - for four years, until being seized by Earl Powis and returned to London on a horse litter. Oldcastle was hanged at St Gile's Field in Decmber 1417, and his body (including the gallows!) burned to ashes.

At the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the hospital was surrendered but the chapel remained as the parish church, the first rector being appointed in 1547. For the first time, it became known as St-Giles-In-The-Fields. In the 1620's the delapidated building was replaced by a proper Gothic church, mostly paid for by the noble Dudley family.

In 1665, the parish was once again connected with pestilence as, unfortunately, the first recorded outbreak of the plague in London was reported in the nearby street called Long Acre. The outbreak ravaged the parish, and the churchyard was extended to accomodate the plague pits. However, this had a detrimental effect on the relatively young building, which began to suffer from damp.

Fifteen years later, another dark episode was written in the church's history. The Popish Plot, inflamed by Titus Oates, saw widespread panic over rumours to assassinate King Charles the Second and re-introduce Catholicism. Between 1678-81, twelve executed victims of the Plot were interred at St Giles, including Oliver Plunket, the Archbishop of Armagh. Plunket has since been re-interred elsewhere, and was canonised in 1975. The other eleven, mostly Jesuit priests, have been beatified. No other London church has this many prospective Saints in its graveyard.

By the early 1700's the damp problem had become intolerable. After years of wrangling, the parishioners finally received a grant of £8000 and in 1730, work began on a new church created in Palladian style by the architect Henry Flitcroft, who is better known as the designer of the Duke of Bedford's sumptuous home, Woburn Abbey. This is the church that occupies the site today.

When completed in 1734, St Giles must have stood as one of the most impressive churches outside of Wren's work in the City. But, wouldn't you know, the bad publicity just kept rolling in. The population of the parish well nigh exploded in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and furthermore it was one of the most notorious parishes in the capital for poverty and squalor. The church's connection with executions continued; it was the last church on the route from Newgate Prison to Tyburn, and the churchwardens would often pay for condemned prisoners to have a last drink of ale at the neighbouring tavern.Slight architectural alterations were made during Victorian times, but still the parish received censure from social observers. An article in the 'Weekly Dispatch' of September 1838 gave a vivid and gruesome picture of the scandalous condition of, and inhumation practices witnessed at, St Giles overcrowded churchyard. I won't repeat any of it here in case you're eating.

Parliamentary Acts closed London's churchyards in the 1850's, which solved the hygiene problem, and the parish's poverty problems faded with the gradual fall in population - from over 30,000 in 1831 to about 4,600 at present.

The church survived the War with a few broken windows, and was restored during the early 1950's well enough for the work to be fulsomely praised by John Betjeman, writing in the Spectator. The internal appearance of the church today is mostly owing to that restoration.

As well as the wonderful, striking galleries, and the intricate gilded patterns on the ceiling, St Giles has two paintings beyond its altar, of Moses and Aaron, painted by Francisco Viera, court painter to the King of Portugal. A model of the church, built by Flitcroft himself as a template, is displayed in a glass case and a wooden pulpit by the north wall turns out to be from John Wesley's principal chapel at West Street. The founder of Methodism himself regularly preached from it, as did his brother Charles.

The monuments are many: in the entrance, before even stepping into the main body of the church, one can see a monument to the sculptor Flaxman who lived in the parish. He was buried at St Pancras - but the remaining monuments are to notable folk who were interred here. These include the Jacobean poet Andrew Marvell, Cecil Calvert 2nd Lord Baltimore, the first proprietor of Maryland, the poet George Chapman who first translated Homer into English (and whose monument was designed by his architect friend Inigo Jones), William Balmain, a surgeon who was one of the founders of New South Wales and who has a suburb in Sydney named after him, Luke Hansard printer to Parliament (after whom Parliamentary records are still called 'Hansard'), and - resting in the crypt with no memorial - one John Pell, a clergyman and mathematician who invented the symbol for division.

St Giles' most notorious monument is to Richard Pendrell. Generations have found mirth in his overblown epitaph, with which I close this history of St Giles In The Field:

'Here lieth Richard Pendrell, preserver and conductor to his sacred majesty King Charles the Second of Great Britain, after his escape from Worcester Fight, in the year 1651, who died Feb 8, 1671.
Hold, passenger, here's shrouded in this Herse,
Unparalell'd Pendrell, thro' the universe.
Like when the Eastern Star from Heaven gave light
To three lost kings; so he, in such dark night,
To Britain's monarch, toss'd by adverse war,
On Earth appeared, a second Eastern Star.
A Pope, a Stern, in her rebellious Main
A pilot to her Royal Sovereign.
Now to triumph in Heav'n's eternal sphere,
Whilst Albion's Chronicles, with matching fame,
Embalm the story of great Pendrell's Name.