Bow Church

Bow Church stands on a traffic island in the middle of Bow Road in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. A church has occupied the site for about seven centuries. The present building mixes 14th-century walls with a 15th-century tower of Kentish ragstone and brick. After wartime bombing, the tower was rebuilt in the late 1940s under architect H S Goodhart-Rendel. The iron railings around the churchyard were reinstated in 1984. A statue of William Ewart Gladstone by Albert Bruce Joy stands just outside the gate. The church’s history includes events that shaped London’s religious life. In 1556, thirteen local people were burned at the stake during the reign of Mary I. In 1767, Colonel Philip Ludwell III, America’s earliest known Eastern Orthodox convert, was buried here according to Orthodox rites. The churchyard became a public garden in 1894, redesigned by Fanny Wilkinson with advice from C R Ashbee. In 1911, Madeline Agar laid out the eastern section. The church celebrated 700 years of worship on the site in 2011. Inside, visitors find monuments to Grace Amcottes (1551), Alice Coborn (1689) and Prisca Coborn (1701). The south aisle was rebuilt in 1794, and the chancel roof collapsed in 1896, leading to a restoration by Osborn C Hills. The church remains active today and gives its name to Bow Church DLR station. Its crest is used by the Bow masonic lodge, founded in 1961 by the then rector, the Rev Francis Mettrick.