St Clement Eastcheap

St Clement Eastcheap is a 17th-century Anglican church in the City of London, standing on Clement’s Lane near King William Street. It is one of only two ancient London churches dedicated to St Clement, the early Roman bishop and martyr. The church’s unusual dedication reflects its medieval setting beside the old wharves of Roman London, where flint walls and mosaic floors once lay twelve to fifteen feet below ground. Eastcheap itself was the eastern market street of medieval London, its name marking it off from the western market at Cheapside. The lane once opened directly onto Eastcheap until King William Street cut it off in the 1880s. The church’s survival through fire and war tells a story of London’s changing life. It was rebuilt after the Great Fire of 1666 by Sir Christopher Wren’s team, with Edward Strong the Elder as master builder. The rebuilding cost £4,365 and drew on a gift of wine to Wren recorded in the parish accounts. In 1670 the parish was enlarged by merging with St Martin Orgar, and a long-running dispute over land led to the addition of a fourteen-foot plot to the east. Later, in the 1870s, William Butterfield remodelled the interior in High Church style, installing stained glass and polychrome tiles. Inside, the church combines Wren’s classical proportions with later Gothic touches. The organ now stands on the west wall, restored by Sir Ninian Comper in 1933, and the painted reredos behind the altar shows figures in blue and gold. Services continue each week, and the building houses several charities. Nearby, the old tower of St Martin Orgar survives as a rectory on Martin Lane. The church also claims to be the St Clement whose bells ring the tune of the nursery rhyme ‘Oranges and Lemons’, though its rival, St Clement Danes in Westminster, makes the same claim.