The Danish (and Norwegian) Church, Wellclose Square

A CHURCH FOR DANISH AND NORWEGIAN SETTLERS

Although now usually referred to as 'the Danish Church', Norwegians who had settled in the area were also involved in its foundation, worship and finance. The timber trade received an impetus from the rebuilding of the City after 1666: it was said Norwegians warmed themselves comfortably by the Fire of London. Church regulations were drawn up in 1691, and the 1694 letters patent, granting a licence to build a church in Marine [now Wellclose] Square were issued to two Norwegian merchants, Martin Lionfeld and Theora Wegerslofle; Lionfeld was appointed superintendent of the project and treasurer of the funds. A 999-year lease, at £5 per year, was obtained from Sir Michael Heneage [hence Heneage Street] and others. 

The Danish ambassador laid the first stone in 1694. Until the church was completed the congregation met in Old Gravel Lane, Wapping. It was consecrated in 1696. King Christian V of Denmark [Christian Street, off Cable Street, is named after him] contributed £2000, plus an annual sum for its upkeep - supplemented by annual collections in Denmark and Norway for the minister and the relief of the poor, and levies on Danish shipments. Over the entrance was the inscription Templem Dano Norwegicum intercessione et munificento serenissimi Danorum Regis Christiani Quinti erectum - MDCXCVI. 

The architect was Caius Gabriel Cibber (1630-1700), a Danish sculptor who had settled in England and found favour with William III. His Bethlem Hospital statues Raving Madness and Melancholy can now be seen in the Guildhall Museum; he also designed the bas-reliefs on the plinth of the Monument.

Millicent Rose, in The East End of London (1951), says He was one of the most accomplished, most European artists working in Stuart England; sculptures by his hand are part of the the fabulous riches of Chatsworth, and Wren welcomed him as collaborator, employing him to make the skyline figures for Trinity College Library, Cambridge, and also to take part in the decoration of St. Paul's and Hampton Court. The influence of Wren is obvious in the Danes' Church; the grouping of round and round-headed windows, the decorative swags of carved stone, the little campanile, all recall elements from the City churches. The most obvious affinity is with St Benet's, Paul's Wharf, a comparison which also emphasizes the difference between the two churches. St Benet's, with its small roofs, lacks the cosmopolitan unity of its eastern contemporary; it was not Wren's custom, in a building of this size, to hide the roof behind a parapet. Cibber's little church has a personality of its own, and though its creator had been in England nearly half a century, he speaks his English with a slightly foreign intonation (p21).

[Interior: engraving by Kip, 1697]

Cibber took over the design of the church from Thomas Woodstock, and gave his services free. He was, said one commentator, a gentlemanlike man and a man of good sense but died poor.

As well as designing the church, he created external and internal sculptures. Outside, on the west front, were figures (in lead) of Faith, Hope and Charity. Charity [pictured] is now in the Carlsberg Ny Glytothek, an art museum in Copenhagen. Inside, there was an elaborately carved pulpit; at its side was an iron and gilt box containing four hour glasses. For the reredos, he carved four baroque figures in wood: Moses, John the Baptist, St Peter and St Paul. When the church was demolished, these figures were transferred to the Danish Seamen's Mission Church in Ming Street [formerly King Street] E14, reconstructed in 1906 and restored and brightly redecorated in 1948 after war damage by Caröe & Partners, an architectural firm of Danish origin. They were said to look odd in this typically Scandinavian setting; but this church in turn was demolished in the 1970s. Where are the sculptures now?

Over the altar was a painting of the angel strengthening Christ in Gethsemane. There were two west-end galleries and a decent organ.  One commentator remarked that it was a commodious and elegant structure, and though the architect appears to have understood ornaments, he has not been too lavish in the use of them.

Cibber's son (by his second wife Jane Colley) was the extrovert dandy Colley Cibber (1671-1757), an actor-dramatist who became Poet Laureate, and whose Apology of 1740 is a mine of information about the theatre of this period. He was interred and memorialised in Westminster Abbey.  However, the Revd Dan Greatorex, first Vicar of St Paul's, in a private note of 1883, claimed that his father and mother were buried in the vault beneath the Danish Church and that when it was demolished in 1869 their coffins were removed into the crypt and there bricked up, under what is now St Paul's School. This remains the subject of conjecture. There was apparently a marble monument to Jane, but it was lost. 

Other monuments were to Christian Wegersloff and his three wives; Anna Penelope, wife of Captain Falkener; Ambrosia, widow of  Pastor Borneman; John Collett; Herman Pohlman; Claude Heide;  George Wolff, Danish consul (died 1828 aged 92) and his wives and relative Ernst Fridrick (an elder of the church who published a book about the church in Copenhagen in 1802); and Peter Alsing, the last churchwarden.

In 1768 the young King of Denmark payed an extended visit to London, travelling incognito under the name of the Prince of Travandahl, and watched closely by the press. He attended worship at the church one Sunday, attended by 'several of the nobility', and sat in the royal pew, enclosed by sash windows.

According to James Southerden Burn, The History of the French, Walloon, Dutch and Other Foreign Protestant Refugees &c (1846) [p241], all the church records were burned at the end of the 18th century after 'difficulties', leaving only one register, covering the period 1802-16. This recorded many communicants on prisoner of war ships, including the Irresistible and Bahama at Chatham (1809-10), the Brave at Plymouth (1811), the Buckingham, Nassau, Fryen and others. Burn also gives a list of ministers who served the church:

At some stage, the church appears to have been struck by lightning. Gustavus Brander FRS FAS (1720-87) [right - painting by Nathaniel Dance], a Swedish naturalist and dilettante, reported to the Royal Society on its effects (Phil. Trans. XLIV. 298). Brander was a curator of the British Museum and a Director of the Bank of England; inheriting his uncle's fortune, he spent his latter years collecting (including the elaborate coronation chair of the German emperors) and landscaping his Hampshire garden. He gave a significant collection of Hampshire fossils (with notes by Dr Solander) to the British Museum. He also published notes on The Form of Cury [sic], a Roll of Ancient English Cookery.

After the congregation disbanded, the Norwegian government transferred its annual subsidy of £100 to the SWEDISH CHURCH in Prince's Square, to which some Norwegian members transferred.

A CHURCH FOR SEAFARERS

When the Danish congregation left the church, it was used by a variety of non-denominational seafarers' missions, such as the Bethel Flag Union and other temperance organisations. It was bought in 1824 by George Charles (Bo'sun) Smith, a Baptist. He referred to the area as 'Satan's Sailortown Seat', and a couple of years earlier had opened a Seaman's Chapel and Sea-boys' School at 42 Lower East Smithfield. Roald Kverndal's Seamen's Missions: Their Origin and Early Growth (1986) gives more details about Smith; and see his Prose and Poetical Works (1824). His vision was:

The Headquarters would be the great rendezvous of the lost and guilty, where the officers of the Captain of Salvation may, under his orders, invite, persuade and impress those poor wretched wanderers who pass by, and graciously compel them to enter the receiving ship of his church universal, from whence they may be drafted to the several cruisers in the glorious service of his Celestial Majesty and in which, according to telegraphic orders, they may war a good warfare against the Lord's enemies and theirs.

But over the years Bo'sun Smith fell out with his committee, who moved to a disused sugar warehouse in the Ratcliff Highway in 1845 without him.

In 1827 this use of the church provoked 'E.I.C.' to write to the Gentleman's Magazine in these terms:

For a 1934 account of Wellclose Square and some of its inhabitants, click here.

For a recent article by the English correspondent of the Danish national press, who lives in the parish, click HERE (if you read Danish!)

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