Church & Churchyard

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• Above is a pencil and watercolour sketch of 1999 by Colin Brooking RIBA, a former member of the congregation.
  

THE CHURCH BUILDING

Then...

Built and fitted out between 1714 (when a site was bought for £400) and 1729, St George-in-the-East was one of fifty new churches planned for London (though only twelve were completed) - the background to the scheme is explained here. Christopher Wren (Upon the Building of National Churches) stressed their Protestant, and auditory, function - unlike the European baroque churches of the time designed for the 'distant murmuring of the Mass' - which he said meant a maximum of 2,000 seats, including galleries; and they should be cheap.

But St George-in-the-East (designed to seat 1,230) was not cheap - it cost £18,557 3s 3d [another account gives the figure of £23,832]. There were many delays - bad bricks, workmen removed to other projects and also, claimed the contractors, because local criminals stole the building materials, 'especially on Sundays'.  

A strong and magnificent pile, said the Grub Street Journal of 1734. It is arguably the most original of the six London churches designed by the idiosyncratic architect Nicholas Hawksmoor. Little is known of his personal life: he was born in 1661 (or maybe earlier) and died in 1736 of 'gout of the stomach', either at Millbank or at East Drayton, Notts. This bust, by the sculptor John Cheere (1709-87), is the only surviving image of him - it sits on a lowly shelf in the buttery of All Souls' College Oxford (which college he designed). He was self-educated, working as Wren's domestic clerk (rather a talented clerk, said Sir John Betjeman) from the age of 18, and he never travelled abroad - so his vast knowledge of classical architecture all came from books and drawings, and his converse with Wren. His six churches are, in order (each is comprehensively documented elsewhere):

• St Alfege Greenwich (for which he got the commission after its roof fell in after the great storm in Greenwich in 1710, where he was working with Wren; it was financed by the New Churches scheme, though the Commission was not fully set up, and some of his additions were in defiance of the Commissioners), 
• St Anne Limehouse, 1712-30, with a circular domed porch and other powerful features; redecorated after a fire in 1850, and again in the 1950s in each case with the hallmarks of those periods; fresh restoration work has recently been done, and the 1851 Gray and Davison organ, originally built for the Great Exhibition, was restored in 2006,
• Christ Church Spitalfields, 1714-29 - a massive statement of his 'primitive' ideals (with echoes of Constantine's baths); over £10m has been spent since 1976 on restoration, and work is under way on the 1735 Richard Bridge organ,
• St George-in-the-East,
• St Mary Woolnoth, completed in 1716, a cube within a cube ingeniously set in a corner site in the City (it is mentioned in T.S. Eliot's 1922 poem The Waste Land),
• St George Bloomsbury, 1716-31- a very complex space and history, since it was reoriented in 1781, making the complete restoration by the World Monuments Fund (£9.2m) a sensitive task.

Hawksmoor probably had a hand in the 1732 obelisk spire of St Luke Old Street; and certainly, in a very different style, in the gothic west front of Westminster Abbey. Outside London, he worked with Vanburgh on a number of large secular projects.

As former Rector Gillean Craig points out, it is instructive to compare St George's with the two other East End churches which were built simultaneously, Spitalfields and Limehouse: all share similar dimensions, all are heroic in scale and detail, all have great west towers, all bear the tension between central and axial plans, all are (or in our case were) built above huge vaulted crypts suspiciously well lighted for mere burial vaults.

Hawksmoor has been 'rediscovered' in recent years, both as a major architect and also as the subject of myth. (One of the pupils in Alan Bennett's The History Boys is questioned about his life and work.) In the 1960s, the architectural critic Ian Nairn wrote that St George-in-the-East represented the more than real world of the drug addict's dream. Hawksmoor figured in the speculative writings of Iain Sinclair, whose poem 'Nicholas Hawksmoor: His Churches' in Lud Heat (1975) links his churches to theistic satanism. Peter Ackroyd developed this line in a 1975 'magic realism' novel Hawksmoor (later made into a film) where the architect becomes a fictional devil-worshipper, Nicholas Dyer, and 'Hawksmoor' a 20th century detective investigating a series of murders in his churches. And Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's novel From Hell speculates that Jack the Ripper used Hawksmoor churches for ritual magic and human sacrifice (they had corresponded with Sinclair). 

These may be good stories, but to portray his churches as centres of gloom and mystery, full of occult and morbid energies and pagan symbols, linked to ancient lay lines and contemporary local murders, is untrue: silly nonsense as art critic Waldemar Januszczak described it in his 2009 BBC Four series Baroque!  Hawksmoor was indeed a restless spirit, drawing inspiration from diverse sources – Roman, Greek, Egyptian, Gothic – for which he faced rejection from his less-able contemporaries. It was certainly an unusual choice to top St George's Anglican tower with six circular Roman sacrificial altars  - which the architectural historian Dr Julian Litten mischievously suggests would make a fine crematorium chimney! - but this is eclectic rather than subversive. His churches are fantastical and monumental essays in stone, but not in coded satanism. In fact he was seeking to recover a pure and primitive style of architecture for the national, established church – which he believed (wrongly, as we now know) stemmed from the Jewish temple. 

Authoritative assessments of Hawksmoor's work are to be found in John Newenham Summerson’s classic Georgian London (first ed. 1945, current ed. Yale University Press 2003) - he was one-time Curator of the Sir John Soames' Museum in Lincolns Inn Fields, and wrote of their gloomy grandeur that approaches the monstrous - and Kerry Downes' Hawksmoor (Thames & Hudson 1970),  who speaks of the ability of Hawksmoor's churches to fascinate the eye and disturb the memory. Architectural historian Professor Vaughan Hart introduced new material about Hawksmoor in his award-winning Nicholas Hawksmoor: Rebuilding Ancient Wonders (Yale UP 2002).  More speculatively, Pierre de la Ruffinière du Prey, in Hawksmoor's London Churches: Architecture and Theology (Chicago University Press 2000) suggests that, in contrast to his city and West End churches, for the East End he developed a kind of 'architectural cockney', powerful and direct, just like the common Greek of the gospels. Du Prey also explores Hawksmoor's 'primitive Christian' ideas -  see here for comment on his original drawings for the site, to include subsidiary buildings at each corner.

To quote Gillean Craig again: St George's has a uniquely complex skyline. As well as the western tower there are four 'pepperpot' turrets, each large enough to form the tower of an ordinary church. These had some practical excuse: each marks the position of a spiral staircase that originally led to the great galleries [they now lead to the church flats; the elaborate detailing around their narrow entrance doors is extraordinary - pictured right]. There were no less than nine doorways into the church [the four flights of steps that now lead down to the crypt level originally led up into the church, through doors where now there are windows - see THIS picture of steps leading up to the vestry door] .... with separate entrances for the different classes according to their ability to pay for better or worse seats. Nowadays the façades, which reward extended study in their massing and detail, appear perverse and wilful, but originally they signalled the original interior disposition of the worship space with great clarity -  a spatial exercise of great boldness and clarity.

We believe that St George's, with these distinctive pepperpot turrets, presents a friendly face to the Highway, Docklands Light Railway and the local community. Pepper give spice and zest to life, and shaking it about is a good symbol of our task as the church. Using a similar metaphor, the Bishop of London has called us ‘St George-in-the-Yeast’!

Externally, the major change to Hawksmoor's vision was the entrance steps, which date from around 1800. Previously, as the drawing on the left and the plan below show, the circular walls of the rotunda hid paired steps to north and south. The pilasters that now butt up against the steps (whose slope came later!) were originally conceived, in a typical Hawksmoor conceit, to be read as the bases of the great pilasters of the tower beyond.

These drawings from The Builder of 28 May 1915 were measured and drawn by Frederick J. Stephens. A wooden model of the church is on permanent loan to the RIBA.

...and now

In May 1941 St George's was severely damaged by an incendiary bomb during the Blitz, leaving only the outer walls, vestry, Lady Chapel, the 160’ tower and all the turrets. All the interior was burnt, except for the still visible fire-shattered fragments of the capitals of pilasters on the east and west walls. Legend has it that one pair of cherubic heads in the apse plasterwork survived the Blitz - the rest is a faithful replica of the original. 

So the church shared in the suffering of the people of London, honoured to bear its scars to the present day - it would have been a tragic mistake to allow it to become a controlled ruin, as some suggested! For a time, worship was conducted in the Rectory and Mission Hall, and then for seventeen years in a prefab within the shell, known as St George-in-the-Ruins.

What you see now is a paradox: within the proud Hawksmoor shell is a modest worship space, designed by Arthur Bailey and reconsecrated in 1964. See here for some of his many drawings for the project, and also pictures of his other work, including other bomb-damaged buildings, an extension to Sheffield Cathedral, and a new church at Twydall Green. Here is a brief architectural assessment of the project from The Times in 1959.

It is approached from an open courtyard where the nave once was – a good space for various activities. From there you enter a light, airy and prayerful space, focused on elements of the surviving semi-circular apse, with a full-height glazed window, good for looking both inwards and outwards. It is eminently 'fit for purpose', and many people find it an oasis of tranquility. We find it sad that some visitors, guidebook in hand, ascend the steps into the courtyard and twenty seconds later turn on their heels and depart: they are blocking out something significant, historically and theologically. 

Some (most recently Colin Amery, in a Royal Academy of Arts lecture in October 2009) continue to argue that the 1960s work was merely a temporary expedient, and that re-creation of a complete Hawksmoor interior should yet be attempted. It was not, and such an exercise could only be a speculative fantasy producing an unsustainable building of limited usefulness, either for worship or community purposes, and failing to honour the complex ongoing history of the church. (Amery had written in similar vein in 1991, supporting the ambitious but unsuccessful scheme by Stanton & Williams - his views are here.)

Others, such as Dr Julian Litten mentioned above (who was a member of the working party considering the future of the church in the 1980s), recognise that the 1960s intervention has its own integrity, and forms part of the undervalued story of post-war church building - though that is not to rule out future adaptation of the church and ancillary rooms, as has already happened with the crypt. In this article on Hawksmoor, Gavin Stamp of the Twentieth Century Society calls it a 'clever modern church'. It won a Civic Trust award in 1967.

As a landmark, it is more visible now than when it was surrounded to the west and south by other buildings which were levelled by the Blitz - see this 1960s view from the south-west (and below for a plan which would have reversed this openness). Du Prey comments, somewhat fancifully, that although it always rose above its low-lying surroundings like a tall white lily growing among weeds, its gleaming Portland limestone now dominates the area as never before. Less flatteringly, a journalist recently likened it to a battered old boxer! And the architectural critic Mervyn Blatch said ungraciously, in the 1970s, we can again stare in wonder or dismay at this strange building. Compare this with the comments from Sir John Betjeman and Bishop Trevor Huddleston, in the same period, here.

In a Guardian column of 1 September 2003 Will Palin (now the Secretary of Save Britain's Heritage) wrote To me, Nicholas Hawksmoor's St George-in-the-East is the most emotionally powerful building in London ... It is the closest we have to the pyramids of Egypt or the temples of Rome, with all the romance and strangeness of a ruin ... Almost 300 years after landing in the fields of Wapping, this architectural meteorite still dominates the landscape - a reminder of its function as a symbol of the power of the established church in the new East End of London.

Rectory accommodation on two floors, and three flats, were created in the former gallery space, accessed by the spiral staircases under each tower. With the old rectory variously tenanted, the site (said one review of the time) became almost like a small village - which was the then-Rector Alex Solomon's intention. Ironically, in some ways this echoed Hawksmoor's notion of a 'primitive Christian settlement' - some of his sketches for the site had shown other buildings on each corner, to match the original parsonage house, though these were never built.

Project 0001 of the London Docklands Development Corporation was the cleaning of the church in 1982 - prompted, it is said, by a visit to the area by Michael Heseltine who singled it out for attention. The LDDC was set up by the Conservative government to regenerate the area by private/public partnerships. (One year it sponsored a carol concert at St George-in-the-East, together with Tobacco Dock Developments, featuring the Academy Chorus of St Martin in the Fields.) Its 1987 publicity brochure grandly claimed Just as the Renaissance heralded the modern world, culminating in an outpouring of creative talent and new thought, so now, in its own, way, a new freedom of expression in London Docklands is fashioning a wholly new environment which heralds the 21st century. LDDC took credit for creating 2.3m square metres of new floor space, the DLR, the Jubilee Line extension, Canary Wharf, one of the tallest buildings in Europe, 30,000 new houses, the relocation of many companies into the area and an increase of jobs from 27,000 to 80,000 when it was dissolved in 1998. However, its legacy for local people remains open to question - how many of the new jobs, for instance, were genuinely local? The emphasis now is on social inclusion and neighbourhood regeneration.     

Following the demise of the Greater London Council, the London Residuary Body inherited ownership of the open sites to the south and west of the church (along The Highway and Cannon Street Road), and in discussion with them and with diocesan authorities Blashfield & Peto (including local architect Mark Willingale) produced a plan in May 1987 for 're-enclosing' the church and gardens with a mixed development of housing and offices to create a 'cathedral close-like' setting, which they proposed that the London Borough of Tower Hamlets (LBTH) should develop [pictured left - originally buildings up to seven storeys were envisaged]; LRB advertised the land for sale in 1988.

These proposals - though intended to provide a co-ordinated approach of benefit all concerned - were resisted, both locally and in the press [right is an article from The Observer of 27 May 1990]. LBTH later consulted on a compromise scheme [far right] to build housing either side of the main church entrance but leave the southern aspect open. In the event, only the north side, in front of the Rectory, was built on. 'Blashfield' and 'Peto' featured as characters in the 1990 parish pantomime Georgilocks and the Three Developers. The remaining land has been incorporated into the Gardens scheme.

INSIDE THE CHURCH

Then...

Some believe that a major inspiration for Hawksmoor's interior [left, as remodelled in the 19th century] was Poplar Chapel [right], one of only three surviving churches built in the Civil War/Commonwealth period, initially by the East India Company in 1653-4. It became the parish church of St Matthias and was much altered, particularly in the mid-19th century by William Milford Teulon (younger brother of the more famous architect Samuel Sanders Teulon), and is now a community centre, but the roof details and pillars can still be seen, and there are some clear similarities with St George-in-the-East (the only one of his churches to have a vaulted ceiling); here is a very informative illustrated leaflet about the Poplar building's history.

Its form is that of a vaulted Greek cross, with flat-ceilinged corner rectangles supported by columns (a pattern also found in Wren churches such as St Anne & St Agnes, and in the Netherlands). The woodwork, in Dutch or Austrian oak, was heavy and dark, and probably not by Hawksmoor himself or of the same quality as in his other churches, though the swag over the internal doorway (pictured below) was fine, and the pulpit was described as an exquisite piece of carving and marquetry. Following repairs in 1783, a painting of Christ in the Garden by Clarkson was installed over the altar, paid for by subscriptions from the 'principal inhabitants'.

In 1820 a new vault was created and the churchyard drained. In 1829 the church was re-roofed, at a cost of £8,000, for which a building grant was obtained. During the work, a licence was granted for services to be held in the Schoolroom of St George's National School in Charles Street, Wapping. The parish population at the time was given as 32,528. 

In 1839 a stained glass window of Faith, Hope and Charity, from designs by Sir Joshua Reynolds (copying New College, Oxford) was added to earlier windows in the apse - very indifferently-painted, according to the Illustrated London News on 3 March 1860, which includes an illustration [right] and critical comments on Bryan King's Lenten decoration of the sanctuary at the time of the Ritualism Riots.

Here is a ticket for a 'cold collation' to celebrate a futher restoration in 1871, which removed the box pews and created additional seating, shown in this plan by Andrew Wilson (fl 1868-78) for 'reseating, repairs, general restoration' (ICBS 07148: the Incorporated Church Building Society was founded in 1818 to provide funds to build and enlarge churches; in 1982 its administration was transferred to the Historic Churches Preservation Trust, and its archive is now at Lambeth Palace Library).

In 1880 Venetian glass mosaics were installed in the apse, depicting five passion and resurrection scenes: from left to right, (1) the Baptism of Christ, (2) the Agony in the Garden [two details], (3) the Crucifixion, (4) the Empty Tomb and (5) the meeting with Mary Magdalene in the Garden. The three central ones were given in memory of John and Phoebe Knight by their three sons; the one on the left was given by T.M. Fairclough in memory of his uncle John Benton, who died in 1841; and the one on the right by Richard Foster to commemorate his parents' marriage in 1805. John Knight had been one of Bryan King's staunchest supporters thirty years earlier at the time of the Ritualism Riots. In 1879 King wrote, from Avebury, Well!  'Time and I against any two!' If I had proposed in my time to have inserted a simple cross in place of the proposed crucifix, I should have been burnt alive. [See above on his controversial Lenten hanging of a plain cross.] But seriously I do most heartily congratulate you and your brothers on this result. Your father and mother will now be the means, through their children, of preaching more effectually than by any words to generations and generations of poor souls the priceless truth of Jesus Christ and Him crucified! In one generation the culture had changed, and the 'innovations' that provoked the rioting no longer excited comment.The mosaics were saved in the Blitz and restored. [Pictures by kind permission of Matthew Andrews]

Robert Bridge's 1733 organ (25 speaking stops on three manuals) was rebuilt between 1881-86 by Gray and Davison. Other renovations took place in 1886, paid for by the Rector C.H. Turner in memory of his uncle Henry Charleswood. The altar was enlarged in 1905. Right are two late-Victorian photographs of the chancel.

Left are some 1941 photographs by Bedford Lemere & Co (the leading architectural photographers from their founding in 1860 until after the Second World War), showing details of the interior just before the Blitz  - from left to right, the ceiling, the pulpit, the porch, the warden's pew, the 'panelled room', the organ, and [poor-quality version] the font.

...and now

As explained above, all that now remains of that interior is the apse, redecorated to the original designs; the two stone corbels, on either side of the east wall; and the mosaics, rescued from the ruins and restored. 

Until a few years ago the walls were painted in a stone colour, and the lampshades were black metal cylinders with small vertical slits, in post-Festival of Britain style [pictured].


The font [left] is similar in style and age (the bowl is recarved) to the one brought from the demolished City church of St Benet, Gracechurch, via St Dionis Backchurch, by the Rector Harry Jones, and stood in the north aisle near the pulpit, in addition to the original font in the north-west baptistery [now the 'panelled room'], on account of the great number of baptisms here according to A.E. Daniell London Riverside Churches (Constable 1897). It was first used here on 17 June 1877, with the Revd Sidney Vatcher officiating. There is no suggestion that the two fonts were used simultaneously; rather, a font in the main church avoided baptism 'by relays' in the separate room, so the original font probably fell out of use. See here for an account of how baptisms were handled earlier in the century, and here for statistics and further comment. By the font stands a paschal candlestick carved by Fr Groser's son Michael, with seven panels depicting passion and resurrection symbols. Over the font hangs an unusual metal corona [right], in aluminium and copper plumbing materials, designed in 1966 by Frank Berry and made by Arthur Greenwood of the Brotherhood of Prayer and Action who were working in the parish at that time. It holds twelve candles, which are lit at Christmas and other festivals.

In the south-east corner is a small plaque [left] commemorating Fr Alex Solomon, Rector 1958-79, who inspired and led the rebuilding. On St George's Day 1991, a week after the 50th anniversary of the destruction of the church interior, his widow presented a lavabo bowl (used by the priest for the ritual rinsing of his hands before the eucharistic prayer) [right] designed for the church and made by Tom Tudor-Pole, whose workshop was in Spitalfields. It bears the inscription I will wash my hands in innocency, Oh [sic] Lord, and so will I go to thine altar (Ps 26.6) and on the inside Remember Alexander Solomon, Priest around the martyr cross of St George-in-the-East, based on four Roman swords - as on the plaque. Pierced wave forms are added around the lips of the bowl. It is unusual - but very appropriate - to have such a commissioned piece, of which he would surely have approved.

On one of the pillars on the south side [right] is a little abstract watercolour by Peter Bedford, who as a member of the Pacifist Service Units was on fire watch at the top of the tower the night the bomb fell. He became an architect, and took up painting as a retirement hobby. It was only when he and his wife visited the church in 1997 that he realised, in conversation with the Rector, that the Blitz had provided the subconscious inspiration for a series of abstract paintings he had recently completed, of which this is one. It bears the inscription How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings of peace (Isaiah 52.7) and Remember before God the horror and destruction of war / Pray and work for peace and reconciliation in our world, together with a memorial plaque to the artist who died in 1998.

Opposite, on the north side [left], is an icon of Christ the Merciful by Dom Anselm Shobrook OSB, commissioned in 1997, with the text Come to me, you who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

On the north wall is the organ, an extension instrument of 1964 by N.P. Mander. (The original instrument of 1733, of 25 speaking stops on three manuals by Robert Bridge, had been rebuilt between 1881-86 by Gray and Davison, but nothing of this instrument survived the Blitz.) It is accessed for tuning and maintenance via one of the flats. On the right is the temporary instrument that preceded it.

The silver altar candlesticks and processional cross and wooden alms plate were designed for the church. Like the lavabo bowl and memorial plaque mentioned above, the cross and alms plate have the martyr cross motif.

The communion silver is a mixture of 20th century pieces and items from former churches in the parish: the silver gilt set from Christ Church Watney Street used at festivals, and items from St Paul Dock Street. None of the historic plate of the parish church survives. Two George II flagons, and a pair of 18th century patens and chalices, together with some Stafford plate used at St Matthew Pell Street, were sold in the 1920s, via an anonymous donor, for display in the London Museum. See this faculty correspondence, which shows how disposing of the 'family silver' was dealt with in those days. More recently, a 1930s chalice and paten, and a boxed communion set (originally for use on a ship?) were given to the Diocese of Namibia in 1994, and at the suggestion of the Bishop of London, a Victorian chalice and paten to the Diocese of Nigeria-Bauchi in 1998. 

The sacrament is reserved (for taking holy communion to the sick and housebound) in a hanging pyx in the apse, behind the altar, installed in 1969 in memory of Charles Turner (Bishop of Islington). It is covered with a white veil and marked with a permanent white (energy-efficient!) light - deliberately brighter than is traditionally used, to provide a visible sign at night from The Highway and Gardens of Christ's presence in his church. Hanging pyxes were in vogue at that time; ours is manually rather than electrically raised and lowered - unlike those in smarter West End churches. (Harry Williams CR recalled in his autobiography his first vicar's remark that in this church even the good Lord travels in a lift.) 

At the doors, and on the bishop's chair (1969, given in memory of Albert Barratt, and sadly vandalised a few years ago) are cast bronzes - and copies in fibreglass - of St George and the dragon [pictured].

THE TOWER

In the rebuilding, the tower was stablised (note the fire damage marks, and the concrete cross on which the flagpole sits - it can be lowered down for painting). The flagpole was renewed in 2003 with a safety ladder and harness added, and topped by a crown to mark the Queen's golden jubilee.

See HERE for details and pictures of the bells: a light ring of eight, cast in 1965 as a demonstration ring for bomb-damaged churches by the Whitechapel Foundry - an ancient, famous and very local firm. They had also restored the old bells in 1938 in memory of Charles John Beresford (Rector 1925-36), which were destroyed in the Blitz.

Above the bells is a room [pictured right], the original purpose of which is unclear (apart from its windows serving an architectural function). It is too high up the tower to be accessed by any but the most energetic!

THE CRYPT

Then...

The crypt, originally accessed from the south-west corner of the church, had been extensively used for burials, in a series of separate vaults. Daniel Lysons, in The Environs of London, vol 2: County of Middlesex (1795) records the following memorial tablets in the crypt: William Norman (1729); Thomas Trott (1733); John Dagge (1735); Joseph Crowcher (1752 - one of the original churchwardens, and Master of the  Vintners' Company in the year of his death*); John Bristow (1762); and Samuel Holman (1793).

* Crowcher's daughter and heiress Elizabeth married Raphael (Ralph) Schomberg, black sheep member of a family of German Jewish physicians who struggled to get membership of the Royal College of Physicians - see the Journal of Medical Biography 1994 2: 113-119. They had ten children, some of whom became eminent. Ralph was buried as a Christian at St George's.

As explained on the rebuilding page, after the Blitz the decision was made to clear and remodel the crypt. Between 11 October and 9 November 1960, 686 boxes and lead coffins, from 59 vaults, were removed and reburied at Brookwood Cemetery -  click left for the detailed record. The crypt then became a hall, with a large stage, which for some years was widely used as rehearsal and performance space both by professional companies, in line with the Rector's aspirations (see here for his retrospective account), and for some big pop music events, as well as for parish functions - here are for more details of all of these). See here for a more unusual use of the crypt in 1976, to provide overnight accommodation for a group of Angola-bound mercenaries who had persuaded the Rector they were a film crew.....

...and now

CHURCHYARD & GARDENS; RECTORY

On the north of the church lies the enclosed 'Churchwardens' Garden' which has been landscaped as a play area for the children of the nursery school. It is entered through the Bryan King gate, which was re-created in 2008. It is through this gate, at the time of the Ritualism Riots of 1859-60, that the Rector escaped from the mob in church, back to the Rectory, whose front door still has metal reinforcements and an iron bar! It is the original parsonage house; full details of its history, and recent restoration, are shown here.

To the east of the church lies St George's Gardens, comprising the former churchyard and various other plots of land. Some of the old headstones are now relocated against the walls. The original area, consecrated in 1729, was extended on the north exactly a century later. Here is a description of an 1824 funeral procession to a family vault near the west door.

Among the significant tombs in the churchyard, as recorded by Daniel Lysons in 1795 were

Others were added prior to the closure of the churchyard.

Like other urban churchyards, it became, in the words of Mrs Basil Holmes in London Burial Grounds (1896), a gorged London graveyard...[to which] the close courts and poverty-stricken streets of the parish sent every year many hundred tenants. Burials ceased after the 1852 Metropolitan Burial Act which created a system of public cemeteries; Bryan King conducted the last regular interments here (eight in number) on 1 October 1854. The churchyard was then closed to public access for the next twenty years. In April 1859 the Privy Council, making directions for various churches, ordered that within the church at St George's the accessible public vaults should be freely limewashed, coffins in the public vault covered in earth and concrete, under the direction of the Medical Officer of Health, and that McDougall's powder, chlorine or other disinfectant be used wherever required. After the closure, five further interments took place, by licence from the Home Secretary -  details here.

It then became effectively the first London churchyard to become a public park in the care of the local authority (two others had been partially cleared), opened in January 1877 [invitation ticket pictured], four years before the Metropolitan Open Spaces Act 1881 (extending a more limited Act of 1877) simplified the process.  Harry Jones, Rector at the time, was very determined in pursuing his vision for an oasis of green space in the crowded city. The necessary legal judgement is reported in Re Rector &c of St George-in-the-East  (1876) 1 PD 311, and here are press reports from 1876 and 1901 (after Harry Jones' death), plus a letter from the diocesan Chancellor of 1907 (around the time when arrangements were made with the new Stepney Borough Council) confirming that this was a 'first'.

The east end of the churchyard, and the whole of the Wesleyan Chapel burial ground behind the Town Hall (which the Vestry purchased in 1876), formed the original garden. Headstones were relocated around the perimeter, and new avenues of trees were planted - 'Rector's Walk' and 'Lime Avenue'. At this time, they also built a mortuary chapel, perhaps replacing one on the Wesleyan site - more details here. In the north-east corner, by what is now a children's playground, a tablet set into the wall records the extension of the site in 1876, with the names of the Rector and churchwardens. (Next to it is a drinking fountain, Erected by the Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association  [undated]). The remainder of the churchyard was cleared in 1886, and the whole was put in order and laid out at the sole expense of Augustus George Crowder JP. Mrs Holmes described it as always bright and neat and full of people enjoying the seats, the grass, the flowers and the air, and noted that the project was unique in being an amalgamation of a churchyard and a dissenting burial ground.

The Morning Post of 2 August 1935 included a picture [left] with the caption

In the 1980s land along The Highway was added to the Gardens, which were re-landscaped by the London Docklands Development Corporation in 1996; Library Place was incorporated in 2002. (The Passmore Edwards Public Library was opened in 1898, adjacent to the Town Hall, and destroyed in the Blitz in 1941 - see here.) In 2008 the Gardens re-opened after a restoration and conservation project, planned in consultation with the church authorities and local people, funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund to the tune of £1.2m with  £420,000 from Tower Hamlets and an additional grant of £100,000 from the London Marathon Charitable Trust. It is good to see them being enjoyed once more. Sadly, the project did not include, as originally intended, the former mortuary chapel which in 1902 had became a Nature Study Museum - this link explains our hopes for its restoration. A map of current land ownership [right] shows the complex nature of the site.

At the east of the church is the War Memorial of 1924 [left] - see here for an account of its planning and dedication, and a list of the names it commemorates -  and (now enclosed by railings) the Raine Memorial [right] - more here about this memorial, and Henry Raine's schools and his curious provision of a marriage portion for local girls.

On the wall of the town hall, at the north of the gardens, is a mural depicting the Battle of Cable Street in 1936, the focus of 75th anniversary events in 2011.

NEIGHBOURING SITES - CONSERVATION AREA

The church and churchyard form the major part of St George-in-the-East Conservation Area -  see here for a map, and here for the text of the 2009 character appraisal and management guidelines (click on 'St George-in-the-East' in both cases). The area has since been extended to include the Old Rose pub across The Highway [pictured here in the 1930s and 2010] which sadly closed in 2011. The third picture shows the uncleared bomb-damaged site to the south-east of the church, some time in the 1950s. Next to this now stands St George's Pools. Its design is of its time, and it is not within the conservation area, but as the report rightly observes, it presents a dead frontage to the road. Tower Hamlets has identified this as a site for possible development as part of its 2011 consultation on the local development framework.