St Mary-le-Strand has been an unloved London church, viewed as a bit of a problem. This wasn’t helped by a terrible accident in the early nineteenth century, which I’ll detail below, caused by its shoddy construction. In 1887, The Daily Telegraph asked: “What is to be done with the internally handsome, externally cumbrous, and obstructive church of St Mary-le-Strand?”
The problem with St Mary-le-Strand is that it’s slap bang in the middle of the road. The road being The Strand. It’s often been referred to as Saint-Mary-in-the-way by infuriated drivers. In 1887, it was being discussed in the press and parliament as a portion of the cornice on the north side had fallen down. This wasn’t the first incident of a crumbling of its structure. And as we’ll see, an earlier incident was fatal.
The early years of St Mary-le-Strand
The church was built during the reign of Queen Anne. The first stone was laid by James Gibbs on the 25th February, 1714 and the whole thing was completed in three and a half years. But it was only consecrated for use by worshippers on the 1st January, 1723. When the church opened, the Strand and surrounding roads didn’t exist as they do today. In fact, to the north of the church was a labyrinth of slums stretching up to Lincoln’s Inn Fields. There were winding, filthy alleys with names like Wych Alley, Drum Alley, Pigmy Court, Lock Alley, Bear and Harrow Alley, etc. The intended congregation for St Mary-le-Strand were the “roughs and wantons” who lived in these slums.
A previous church had been built to the side of Somerset House and apparently didn’t block the road. For some reason, Gibbs stuck his church in the middle of the thoroughfare. He was held in high esteem at the time having just completed the magnificent church of St Martin-in-the-fields, which still stands proud off Trafalgar Square. But this creation was never adored to the same extent. In fact, it came to be ridiculed and despised.
Part of his original plan was to erect a two hundred and fifty foot column on the west side of the church surmounted by a statue of Queen Anne. This would have been far higher than Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square, built a century later. When the queen died, Gibbs was told to drop the idea. There is a suggestion that he lost his way with the rest of the building and some of the workmanship and design was shoddy.
Proof of that would come after his death.
The tragic accident
In 1802, crowds had gathered in the Strand to celebrate peace between France and Britain agreed at the Treaty of Amiens – after a long period of war between the two countries. A man stood on the roof of the church and leaned on one of the many stone urns to watch the heralds marching past announcing the peace treaty. Incredibly, the large urn suddenly fell into the street below.
Three young men were killed. One died instantly as the urn fell on his head. Another was so badly wounded that he died on the way to hospital. While the third died two days afterwards. A young woman was also seriously injured and others suffered cuts and bruises. The two hundred pound urn had bounced off the side of the church taking another piece of masonry with it and when it hit the pavement, it buried itself about a foot into the flagstones.
The poor man on the roof fainted but was still arrested. However, he was discharged when it was found that Gibbs’ workmen, a hundred years before, had cut corners. The urn should have been fixed to the roof by an iron spike but instead there was just a wooden pole. That had rotted away over time and it was no surprise that a killer urn tipped into the street below.
At least one other urn seems to have fallen at a later date, though without any fatalities.
The Victorians are fed up with the church
By the 1880s, the Victorians were busy improving London – sweeping away slums, widening streets, and removing idiosyncratic buildings that offended their modernising spirit. The Metropolitan Board of Works declared the church a dangerous structure and demolition was seriously considered. The board wanted to widen the Strand and that would mean either getting rid of Holywell Street or St Mary-le-Strand. In the end, it was Holywell Street that disappeared – not mourned by respectable Victorians as it had been a centre of pornographic publishing – women’s ankles could be seen in racy publications!
By 1887, part of the church’s cornice had collapsed. In parliament it was suggested that either the church should be flattened or moved. However, it survived. Today, the area to one side has been pedestrianised and there is finally an attempt to appreciate this three hundred year old church. In reality, though, Londoners have never warmed to it and it remains an either ignored or mocked part of our past.
