St. George's Church, Bloomsbury

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Tower of St. George Bloomsbury with lion, unicorn and George I on the steeple

St. George's Church, Bloomsbury is a church in Bloomsbury in central London, England. It was built by Nicholas Hawksmoor between 1716 and 1731. St. George's was consecrated on 28 January 1730 by Edmund Gibson, Bishop of London. Previously part of the parish of St. Giles in the Fields, this new parish was the result of rapid development in the area during the latter part of the 17th and early part of the 18th centuries. The Commissioners for the Fifty New Churches Act of 1711 appointed Nicholas Hawksmoor, a pupil and former assistant of Sir Christopher Wren, to design and build this church.

The grandeur of Hawksmoor's majestic design has inspired many. The stepped tower, influenced by Pliny's description of the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, and topped with the only statue of King George I, is depicted in William Hogarth's well-known engraving "Gin Lane" (1751). The Portico is the most handsome Georgian portico in London based on the Temple of Baalbek in the Lebanon. Charles Dickens used St George's as the setting for "The Bloomsbury Christening" in Sketches by Boz. The Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope was baptised here in 1824. Richard Meux Benson, founder of the first Anglican religious order for men, Society of St. John the Evangelist, the "Cowley Fathers", was also baptised in the church. The funeral of Emily Davison, the suffragette who threw herself in front of the King's horse, took place here in 1913. Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethopia attended a controversial requiem for the dead of the Abyssinian war in 1937.

It is currently the subject of major conservation work and closed to visitors. The congregation continues its services and parish life as normal; services take place Sundays at 10.30 and Wednesdays at 13.10, using the new main doors in Bloomsbury Way. The building is due to reopen fully from October 2006 and will include a new exhibition on the church, Hawksmoor and Bloomsbury housed in its undercroft.