St John Horsleydown

St John Horsleydown was an Anglican parish church in Bermondsey, South London. Built between 1727 and 1733, it stood in Fair Street beside what is now Tower Bridge Road. Nicholas Hawksmoor and John James designed the church for the Commission for Building Fifty New Churches. The church had a simple nave with aisles and a distinctive tapering spire topped by a comet-shaped weather vane. Nikolaus Pevsner called it a stately stone building with a bare west front and a symmetrical north side featuring a large Venetian window. The church suffered severe bomb damage during the Blitz on 20 September 1940. By 1952 only its west, north and east walls remained standing. The parish merged several times, first with St Olave’s and later with St Magdalen Bermondsey. A rebuilding plan was approved in 1956 but never carried out. The last baptism took place in 1960 before the church closed in 1968. The London City Mission bought the site in 1974 and built Nasmith House there the following year. Remains of the church’s plinth can still be seen in the churchyard, rising up to 10 feet in places. The shell of the church appears in the promotional film for Manfred Mann’s 1969 single ‘Ragamuffin Man’.