St Katharine Cree
St Katharine Cree is a church building of the Anglican Church of England on Leadenhall Street in the City of London . The church, built between 1628 and 1631, is the only preserved church from the Jacobean period that still exists in London. The church shows a rare combination of Gothic and Neoclassical elements and is richly decorated in the tradition of a Proto-Anglo-Catholicism.
Today there is no active parish in St Katharina Cree due to a lack of residents in the City of London. In 1950 it declared a British law to be a guild church for finance, trade and industry. It's the Ward Church of Aldgate Ward in the City. The Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church holds services here on Sundays.
The name arose over time from the original St Katharine Christchurch and refers to the Holy Trinity monastery , Christ Church, to which St Katharine once belonged. Hans Holbein the Younger is buried either in St Katharine or in the neighboring church of St Andrew Undershaft .
history
Presumably a church was built on the site of St Katharine Cree as the cemetery chapel of the Holy Trinity Monastery. The first building came from the early 13th century, a successor from the years 1280–1303. As early as 1414, however, there was a full church with its own parish St Katharine. A new building was built in 1504. From this the tower that adorns the otherwise younger church has been preserved. The entrance to the tower and the dome on the tower, however, date from the late 18th century.
St Katharine Cree was built between 1628 and 1631 and is one of the most important church buildings of the time. During the Jacobean age, church building in England was at its lowest point. It is therefore the only surviving church from this era in London.
The church dedicated the Bishop of London William Laud , who was shortly afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury and later executed. Laud, one of the Caroline Divines , a forerunner of Anglo-Catholicism and a staunch opponent of Puritan and Calvinist currents in the Anglican Church, had the ideal type of his church building program implemented in St Katharine Cree. Many concepts are consistently implemented in St Katharine, which Laud, in his short time as Bishop of London, had extended to other existing churches in his sphere of activity.
In contrast to the predominant Puritan church buildings of the time, St Katharine Cree is strictly oriented in an east-west direction and oriented towards the altar . The church service should be oriented towards the altar, not towards the church. In contrast to the simple white walls of Calvinist churches of the time, the ceilings and walls are richly decorated.
The church survived the Great Fire of London unscathed. After the fire, the Livery Companies used the church to distribute food to the workers who were rebuilding the Livery Halls.
The Lion Service has been held on October 16 every year since 1649 . It commemorates the rescue of the then Lord Mayor of London, John Gayer , from lions. Gayer had been separated from his companions on a trade trip and fell asleep. The next morning, traces of lions were found around Gayer's sleeping area, but he was unharmed. On his return to London, Gayer donated for the poor of the congregation and also the baptismal font for the church in order to hold the annual thanksgiving service.
The roof was damaged in World War II. The east window was destroyed in the 1992 bomb attack on the nearby Baltic Exchange .
Major restorations were carried out in the years 1878–1879 by RP Notley and 1956–1962 by Marshall Sisson . The latter was mainly concerned with repairing war damage caused by the London Blitz .
In 1950 the British Parliament designated the church as one of seven Guild Churches to serve during the day for employees in the City of London. In the same year it became a Grade I listed building . From 1962 to 1997, the Industrial Christian Fellowship in particular used the building. From 1998 to 2003 it was the seat of the City Church Development Group , which wanted to facilitate access to the London churches.
architecture
The churchyard has been designed as a garden since 1965. In the center is a fountain from that year, which is framed by much older half-columns with triangular gables. Similar to the nearby St Olave Hart Street , access to the courtyard is through a stone passage decorated with a corpse as a memento mori .
The church itself is unusual as it integrates numerous elements of the then new Palladianism into a Gothic building .
The south side of the church is on Leadenhall Street. This dates from the 17th century and is made of ragstone. The foundations of the older medieval church can still be seen from their foundations. The three-part windows are slightly raised in the middle. The straight parapet replaced the older triangular gables over the windows at the middle and ends in the 18th century . A small sundial is attached to the south wall of the nave .
On the west side is a large window with a small triangular gable above. This has been walled up since 1686. The rose window on the east side is to be designed according to the model in the old (pre-fire) St Paul's Cathedral .
The interior is divided into six bays , some of which are cut off by the inclined west wall. Corinthian columns support the arcades, which - atypical for the period - do not have any entablature in between . The two yokes of the choir are more richly decorated than the rest of the interior. The keystones are marked with the coat of arms of the Livery Companies .
In the north-west of the main nave, the compressed dimensions reveal the narrower dimensions of the medieval predecessor church. Also here is a wall from the 15th century. This is also where you can best see the elevation of the floor, which has been 1.5 meters above the medieval level since the 17th century.
Furnishing
The octagonal marble baptismal font dates from the year the church was built in 1631, still with the original fittings . The altarpiece is simple, with Corinthian columns, from 1728.
The finely carved organ dates from 1686, with additions made in the 19th century, and was made by Father Smith . Both Georg Friedrich Handel and Henry Purcell played on it. The organ was restored in 2003. In the church are monuments to the English politician Nicholas Throckmorton , Bartholomew Ellnor (from Humphrey Moyer ), Richard Spencer (from Thomas Cartwright ), Samuel Thorp (from Bacon ), a stooped woman, Ralph Clay . Throckmorton, who acted as the gray eminence in the conflict between Queen Elizabeth I and Maria Stuart . Throckmorton is also buried in the church.
literature
- Simon Bradley, Nikolaus Pevsner: London 1, The city of London, 1997, London: Penguin. ISBN 978-0-300-09624-8 , pp. 228-229
- Leigh Hattes: London City Churches Bankside Press, 2003 ISBN 0954570502 , pp. 52-53
Web links
- St Olave Hart Street and St Katharine Cree website
- Love's Guide to the Church Bells of St Katharine Cree
Remarks
- ↑ a b c St Olave's & St Katharine Cree: History and Architecture ( Memento of the original from September 11, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i Simon Bradley, Nikolaus Pevsner: London 1, The city of London, 1997, London: Penguin. ISBN 978-0-300-09624-8 , p. 228
- ^ Oskar Bätschmann, Pascal Griener: Hans Holbein Reaction Books, 2008 ISBN 1861890400
- ↑ a b Christopher Hibbert Ben Weinreb, John & Julia Keay: The London Encyclopaedia Pan Macmillan, 2011 ISBN 0230738788 , p. 778
- ^ A b Peter Guillery: Suburban Models, or Calvinism and Continuity in London's Seventeenth-Century Church Architecture , Architectural History, Vol. 48, (2005), p. 71
- ^ A b London Gardens Online: St Katharine Cree Churchyard
- ↑ Stephen Roud: The Engiish Year , October 16, Penguin UK, 2008 ISBN 0141919272
- ↑ Leigh Hattes: London City Churches Bankside Press, 2003 ISBN 0954570502 , pp. 52-53
- ↑ a b c d Simon Bradley, Nikolaus Pevsner: London 1, The city of London, 1997, London: Penguin. ISBN 978-0-300-09624-8 , p. 229
- ^ Simon Bradley, Nikolaus Pevsner: London: The City Churches Yale University Press, 1998 ISBN 0300096550 , p. 23
- ↑ St Olave's & St Katharine Cree: About Us ( Memento of the original from September 11, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
Coordinates: 51 ° 30 ′ 48.2 " N , 0 ° 4 ′ 44.5" W.