Another in an occasional series on churches outside the City walls that survived the Great Fire of 1666….
St Giles Cripplegate was originally built in around 1100, possibly on the site of an even older, Saxon, church, and rebuilt in 1390, and again in 1545. It was undamaged by the Great Fire of 1666, although nonetheless requiring to be restored in 1682-4, when the top stage of the tower was added. It was later severely damaged by bombing on 24th/25th August and 29th December, 1940, and substantially rebuilt by Godfrey Allen in 1960. The walls are in part original, fourteenth-century. The church was the site of Oliver Cromwell’s wedding, and of John Milton’s burial. There is also a memorial here to the sixteenth-century explorer Martin Frobisher. Giles is the patron saint of cripples, indigents and social outcasts.
