St George the Martyr Southwark
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St George the Martyr is a church in the historic Borough district of south London. It lies within the modern day London Borough of Southwark.
It is named after Saint George. According to traditional hagiography, the saint served as a soldier in the Roman Army and was killed on the orders of the emperor Diocletian in 303 for refusing to persecute Christians and confessing to his own Christianity.
The west tower dominates views along Borough High Street from both the north and south due to the curve in the street at this point, where it now meets Great Dover Street. Originally, a much narrower road to the south of the church called Church Street led into Kent Street (now renamed Tabard Street), the historic route to Dover. Due to the volume of traffic, Great Dover Street was cut through parallel to Kent Street in the early nineteenth century. Tabard Street was subsequently extended through the churchyard on the north side of the church, leaving the church on an island site.
The present church is believed to be the third on this site. There was a Norman church of unknown appearance. This was replaced at the end of the fourteenth century by a church with a bell tower that appears in William Hogarth's engraving of Southwark Fair made in 1733, a year before it was demolished. The church was rebuilt in a Classical style to the designs of John Price between 1734 and 1736, partly funded by £6,000 from the Commission for Building Fifty New Churches. .
The red brick and Portland Stone structure of the church has suffered from considerable subsidence damage, and the nave was declared unsafe in 2000, although services continued in other parts of the building. In September 2005, St. George the Martyr received funding via the Heritage Lottery Fund for repairs and refurbishments, which involve complete underpinning of the building, and the lowering of the floor levels in the crypt to create additional space. A large number of lead Georgian coffins were removed from the crypt to allow the works to take place. Subsequent archaeological investigations of the ground beneath the church found substantial Medieval and Roman structures. The destruction of some archaeological remains before a fuller excavation could be completed led to controversy. [1]
The church was closed for restoration works between September 2005 and March 2007. During this time the congregation worshipped at nearby Guy's Chapel.
Services at St George's resumed on Palm Sunday 1 April 2007. [2]
The church has strong associations with Charles Dickens, whose father was imprisoned for debt in the Marshalsea prison. The surviving wall of the prison adjoins the north side of the churchyard. Dickens himself lived nearby, in Lant Street, lodging in a house that belonged to the Vestry Clerk of St George’s. This was during the darkest period of his life when, as a teenager, with his father in prison, he had to work in the `blacking factory’, and his literary career must have seemed an impossible dream. Later, he was to set several scenes of the novel "Little Dorrit" in and around St George’s Church. There is a small representation of Little Dorrit in the east window of the church.
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ http://arts.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1786849,00.html]
- ^ http://www.london-se1.co.uk/news/view/2641
[edit] See also
[edit] External Link
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