Another in the series on historic churches in the City of London …
By the time of the Great Fire of London in 1666, there were over a hundred parish churches and other places of Christian worship within and immediately without the walls of the City, despite a number having been closed down during the Reformation. To be precise, according to Parish Clerks’ records, there were 97 churches within the walls of the City, and 16 without, making a total of 113.
St Anne and St Agnes, also known as St Anne within Aldersgate or St Anne in the Willows (shown on “S. Anne La.” – near Aldersgate – on sixteenth-century “Agas” map/Map of Early Modern London), was originally built around 1150, and subsequently rebuilt, after a fire, in around 1548.
The church was badly damaged in the Great Fire, and rebuilt by Wren ?and Hooke, using some of the surviving structure, between 1677-87. It was then badly damaged again by bombing on the night of 29th December, 1940, and rebuilt again in 1963-68. It was spared demolition after the war “partly by the intrepidity of its vergeress, who kept it open … even when the City Surveyor had served a Dangerous Structure Notice”.
Many of the interior fittings were salvaged from St Mildred Bread Street, and the pulpit from St Augustine Watling Street.
