page_title: St Alphege London Wall
section_title: Rebuilding
hierarchical_section_title: St Alphege London Wall / History / Rebuilding
caption_attribution_description: English: St Alphage Garden, City of London. A plaque mounted on the wall from the churchyard's conversion into a garden in 1872. Salters' Hall stands behind the wall.
context_page_description: St Alphege or St Alphage London Wall was a church in Bassishaw Ward in the City of London, built directly upon London Wall. It was also known as St Alphege Cripplegate, from its proximity to Cripplegate. It is now operated as St Alphege Gardens.
context_section_description: In 1774 the church was found to be unfit for use, and a committee was set up to arrange its rebuilding. This was done at a cost of £1350, retaining the tower. The new church was opened on 24 July 1777.
  The rebuilt church had two fronts; an eastern one in Aldermanbury, and one to the north facing London Wall. George Godwin described them as “both equally remarkable for want of taste in the arrangement, and of beauty in the effect”. The east front had a Venetian window between two pilasters, elevated on a basement; this arrangement was flanked by two doorways. The door and window surrounds and pilasters were stone, the rest brick. The façade to London Wall had two Doric columns, flattened against the wall, supporting an entablature and pediment. Between the columns was a doorway, its lobby leading into the medieval tower. The interior of the body of the church was described by Godwin as “merely a plain room with a flat ceiling, crossed from north to south by one large band at the east end”. The pulpit was, unconventionally, placed against the west wall, so that the congregation faced away from the altar.
  By 1900, the tower and porch were again in a poor state, and the north entrance was rebuilt with a neo-Gothic façade in 1913.
  The church was damaged in an air raid in the First World War. The Parish was amalgamated with that of St Mary Aldermanbury in 1917. The church was rebuilt in 1919, but was scheduled for demolition in the same year. The bells went to St Peter’s Acton. The nave was demolished in 1923, leaving the tower and the porch. Until the Second World War, the tower was maintained with an altar and chairs as a place for prayer.
  The tower was gutted by fire in 1940. The City of London Corporation began to redevelop the badly bombed area in 1958, as part of the new Barbican complex. In the course of the development, the early twentieth-century north porch and the upper levels of the tower were removed.
  During 2018 and 2019 as part of a program to install a raised walkway the remaining parts of the church tower and area around it were renewed to form a central feature in a new plaza named London Wall Place & St Alphage Gardens.   
  The remains of the church were designated a Grade II listed structure on 4 January 1950. The surviving remnants of these consist of the ruin of a central tower, built of flint and rubble masonry, with arches on three sides; the south wall is missing.
  For illustrations of the church in its various phases, see 
  In 1954, the amalgamated Parish was united with St Giles-without-Cripplegate.
caption: A plaque from the churchyard's conversion to a public garden in 1872.
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