St Botolph's Aldersgate

St Botolph’s, Aldersgate stands beside the old gate of Aldersgate on the northern edge of the City of London. The church was built outside the Roman wall and its first rector was recorded in 1333. A medieval hospital for the poor once stood nearby and was later taken over by the parish. The Gothic church measured 24 metres by 16 metres and had a 20-metre stone steeple with six bells. After the Great Fire it was rebuilt in brick between 1788 and 1791 under surveyor Nathaniel Wright. The interior is praised for its harmony of woodwork and plaster. John Betjeman called the sequence of galleries and columns ‘exalting’. The only 18th-century stained glass in the City shows Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, painted by James Pearson. The organ by Samuel Green from 1788 remains in the west gallery. Monuments from the old church include the tomb of Anne Packington who died in 1563. Visitors enter through a Roman-cement screen wall added in 1831. The Venetian window above the door lights the apse behind the altar. Postman’s Park, formed from three churchyards in 1880, lies just north of the building. The Watts Memorial there records heroic deaths of Londoners. The church now hosts weekday lunchtime services and Sunday worship by the London City Presbyterian Church, while orchestras rehearse in its quiet interior.