Since new Labour came to power in 1997, the official focus on architecture has
been relentlessly modern. For years, party top dogs were even forbidden to
be seen in the context of anything historic.
Conservation was a throwback, hence Tory — or, worse, old Labour. So it is
extraordinary that, almost by stealth, a wonderful thing has happened in
London: the salvation of some of its finest 18th-century churches.
Back in the 1990s, theirs was a sorry plight. Hawksmoor’s famous Christ Church
Spitalfields (completed in 1729) had long been saved from demolition, but
its restoration had dragged on for decades. Hardly anyone seemed to notice
one of his other great churches, the rapidly decaying St George’s Bloomsbury
of 1731. Meanwhile, the 1733 St Luke’s in Old Street — in which the
redoubtable Hawksmoor also had a hand — remained a roofless hulk, buddleia
sprouting from its cracked, subsiding walls. It was a shameful state of
affairs to find in one of the world’s greatest and wealthiest capitals.
Today, all that has been turned round. Three years ago, St Luke’s was
imaginatively brought back into use as a rehearsal and performance space for
the London Symphony Orchestra, based at the nearby Barbican. Christ Church
Spitalfields finally secured the funding it needed to accelerate its complex
restoration, and reopened in splendid shape in 2004 — as a church, as well
as a classical-music venue, hub of the Spitalfields Festival. Its Bloomsbury
cousin is now being rapidly restored, thanks to an initiative by the World
Monuments Fund. This autumn, the task will be complete.
There is more to come. The 1726 St Martin-in-the-Fields by James Gibbs,
overlooking the northeast corner of Trafalgar Square, is to be spruced up as
part of an ambitious £36m scheme to extend its crypt rooms, long used both
for a homeless centre and a rated cafe. A huge L-shaped excavation has
appeared around the church as work gets under way on this almost entirely
underground space (plus a restored John Nash building alongside), designed
by the architect Eric Parry. It will contain rehearsal space, meeting rooms
for the church and the local Chinese community, a chapel, a parish hall and
much else. The Heritage Lottery Fund is again involved.
All of these are, in their way, responses to a thorny nationwide dilemma:
churches are a key part of our cities, towns and villages and we would be
sorry to see them go, but congregations are dwindling and the Church of
England is by no means the fabulously wealthy institution it once was. In a
largely secular or at most multifaith society, what are we to do with all
these churches? What new meaning and purpose can they acquire? St George’s
Bloomsbury is the simplest case of all these. It was a church, it remains a
church, and though it will become more of a music and exhibition centre now
that its crypt — until recently stuffed with coffins, as was the custom —
has been emptied, it will stay what it always was: one of London’s more
characterful corners.
The church struck lucky. Plaster was starting to fall from the portico, water
was soaking in and trees were growing out of the extraordinary
stepped-pyramid tower, with its statue of King George I on top. About the
time the church started casting around for money, at the end of the 1990s,
the World Monuments Fund was looking for an exemplary London restoration
project. The Paul Mellon Fund was keen to get involved, putting up nearly
half the money, while the Heritage Lottery Fund picked up the tab for much
of the rest. It all cost £8.6m. Work began in 2002 and is now nearly
finished. Compared to Spitalfields (a bigger church, admittedly), this has
been lightning-fast.
Heritage-lobby good taste is much in evidence inside. The church used to be
gaudily painted. Now, all is taken back to a presumed original state of
calm, stone-coloured distemper and dark wood. More important, the axis of
the church has been turned back to Hawksmoor’s original east-west layout. By
the late 18th century, the altar had been moved to the north. You can see
why — the portico and main doors are on the south side. But it seems
Hawksmoor had always meant his row of entrance doors to be largely
ornamental, and made his real entrance at the side. That characteristic
perversity — what looks like the main entrance is not — is now reinstated,
along with his east-west alignment. So you enter through the bottom of the
tower on the western side instead.
It is on the outside, however, at the base of the pyramid roof, that the most
visible restoration has been made. Hawksmoor’s tower is a fantasia on the
Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, one of the Seven Wonders of the World. This
homage to classical antiquity was and is unique in English churches. But
whereas the mausoleum had a statue on top of its stepped-pyramid roof, it
did not, so far as we know, have giant beasts chasing each other round its
base. Hawksmoor, ever the eccentric, decided that his church needed two
lions and two unicorns, one for each corner. Such beasts are usually seen in
heraldic pose on the royal coat of arms, but here they are engaged in a game
of architectural tag.
Those spoilsport Victorians removed them — perhaps bits were falling off by
then. So they have been re-created by the sculptor Tim Crawley, and they are
big. Look up and you will be intrigued. What was going through Hawksmoor’s
head? What political message do they convey? He was no barrel of laughs,
brooding old Nick, so these cavorting symbols of royalty must have signified
something. Hogarth used the church in the background of Gin Lane: the
implication is that, like the debased humans in the foreground, they are
roaring drunk.
In Bloomsbury, they have only to re- instate Hawksmoor’s original north
gallery and get rid of an intrusive organ installed in the 1950s, and the
job will be done. It feels good, and, unlike Spitalfields, it retains some
rough edges, even in the new stone floor of the church, with its underfloor
heating coils. I hope they preserve the soot- blackened external flanks,
which they are considering cleaning. Hawksmoor and soot get along just fine,
and there’s not much of the real stuff left in London.
The great thing about Hawksmoor is that, for all his blinding originality, raw
emotion and interesting symbolism, he was also a government official. This
former assistant to Christopher Wren was a senior honcho in the Royal Works
department, and one of the two surveyors appointed to carry out the “50 new
churches” act of 1711, intended to bring the established church into the new
suburbs, where nonconformism was taking root. Gibbs was the other. In the
end, only 12 were built, seven by Hawksmoor. Of his others, St Mary Woolnoth
in the City survived the indignity of having part of Bank Underground
station built in its crypt. Three were badly damaged in the Blitz, though
all were patched up after: St Alfege in Greenwich; St George-in-the-East,
Wapping; and St Anne’s Limehouse — which had been victorianised after an
earlier fire in 1850. That should be the next great Hawksmoor rescue
project. It’s not just that they don’t build ’em like he did any more. You
just don’t get civil servants like him any more.
