St Stephen Walbrook, City of London

St Stephen Walbrook stands in the heart of the City of London, beside the Mansion House and a short walk from Bank and Monument stations. The present domed church was built by Sir Christopher Wren after the medieval building was lost in the Great Fire of 1666. It occupies a site once crossed by the Walbrook, a stream the Romans used for fresh water. Earlier still, archaeologists believe the church may have been raised over the remains of a Roman Mithraic temple. The first wooden church was built between AD 700 and 980, then moved to higher ground in the 15th century. The church’s interior is one of Wren’s most admired works. The dome rises 19 metres above twelve Corinthian columns arranged in a square, its circular base carried on eight arches rather than pendentives. Nikolaus Pevsner counted it among England’s ten most important buildings. The carved furnishings—altarpiece, pulpit, font cover—were made by Thomas Creecher, Stephen Colledge, William Newman and Jonathan Maine. A white marble altar by Henry Moore was installed in 1987, its central position requiring special permission from church courts. Visitors enter up sixteen steps through a west porch and find the dome overhead and the altar at the centre. Benjamin West’s painting Devout Men Taking Away the Body of St Stephen once hung on the north wall; it is now in Boston after a long dispute. A glass case in the church preserves the original Samaritans telephone, recalling how the charity began in the crypt in 1953 under rector Chad Varah. The building itself, lightly damaged in the Blitz, remains a Grade I listed example of Wren’s skill.