St Helen’s Church, Bishopsgate
St Helen’s Bishopsgate is a large medieval parish church tucked behind Bishopsgate and overshadowed today by City skyscrapers, including the Gherkin. It is unusual in having a double‑nave plan: a parish church and a Benedictine nuns’ church were built side by side in the 13th century, later opened up into one long interior with arcades between them.
The church is one of the few in the City to have survived both the Great Fire of 1666 and the Blitz, earning a reputation as a “tough survivor” amid repeated damage and restoration, most recently after IRA bombs in 1992 and 1993. Inside, St Helen’s contains more monuments than any other London church except Westminster Abbey, leading some to call it the “Westminster Abbey of the City”.
Address: St Helen’s Bishopsgate, Great St Helen’s, London EC3A 6AT, United Kingdom
Interesting Facts:
-
Double‑nave layout from a medieval nunneryDouble‑nave layout from a medieval nunnery
-
“Westminster Abbey of the City”St Helen’s contains more than 50 wall monuments and grand tombs, including four large recumbent effigies from the 14th to 17th centuries and elaborate Elizabethan altar tombs. This density and quality of memorials has led to it being nicknamed the “Westminster Abbey of the City”, second only to the Abbey itself in monument numbers.
-
A rare triple survivor: Fire, Blitz and bombsThe church is one of the very few City churches to survive the Great Fire of 1666, major bomb damage in the Second World War and two IRA bombs in 1992 and 1993 that shattered windows and damaged the structure. A 1990s restoration by architect Quinlan Terry re‑ordered the interior while preserving most of the historic fabric and monuments.
-
Shakespeare’s parish churchWhen William Shakespeare lived and worked in the Bishopsgate area in the 1590s, St Helen’s was his local parish church, and his name appears in the parish rate books. This makes it one of the key surviving churches directly linked to the playwright’s life in London.
