Another in the series on City of London buildings that survived the Great Fire of 1666, and that still survive to this day …
The church of St Ethelburga Bishopsgate was originally built in around 1250, possibly on the site of an even older, Saxon, church, and extended in 1390, and again in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It was undamaged in the Great Fire, although nonetheless restored in 1861-2, and again, by Ninian Comper, in 1912, and described by Nairn in 1966 as “one of the sweetest things in the City”. Sadly, it was severely damaged by an IRA bomb on 24th April, 1993, and substantially rebuilt, and reopened as a Centre for Peace and Reconciliation, focussing on the role of faith in conflict resolution, in 2002. The west front was rebuilt using stone from the Medieval church, the doorway along the lines of the fourteenth-century one, and the three-light window along the lines of the fifteenth-century one.
“The Tent” and “Peace Garden” at the back were built at the same time, to encourage inter-faith dialogue. Ethelburga was the sister of Erkenwald, the seventh-century Bishop of London after whom Bishopsgate is named.
