page_title: St Clement's, Eastcheap
section_title: 19th century
hierarchical_section_title: St Clement's, Eastcheap / History / 19th century
caption_attribution_description: English: "St Martin Ongar, London", London: Jones &amp; Co. (1831) Steel line engraving on paper. View north along Martin Lane with the old church of St. Martin Orgar - a church particularly associated with French-speaking Huguenots. Engraved by James Baylis Allen (1803-76) from the original pencil drawing (now in the Guildhall Library, London) by Thomas Hosmer Shepherd (1793-1864), for his series "London and its Environs in the Nineteenth Century" produced between 1829 and 1832. See the series advertised in the engraving on the church-yard wall (if you look carefully).
context_page_description: St Clement Eastcheap is a Church of England parish church in Candlewick Ward of the City of London. It is located on Clement's Lane, off King William Street and close to London Bridge and the River Thames.
  Clement was a disciple of St Peter the Apostle and was ordained as Bishop of Rome in the year 93 AD. By legend, Clement was martyred by being tied to an anchor and thrown into the Black Sea, which led to his adoption as a patron saint of sailors. The dedication to St Clement is unusual in London, with only one other ancient church there dedicated to this saint, namely St Clement Danes, Westminster. It is also located a little north of the Thames, but further west from Eastcheap and outside the old City boundary, just beyond the Temple Bar on the Strand.
context_section_description: In May 1840 Edward John Carlos wrote in The Gentleman's Magazine, protesting about the proposed demolition of St Bartholomew-by-the-Exchange and St. Benet Fink, following a fire in 1838 that had razed the Royal Exchange and damaged those two churches. In his article, Carlos referred to earlier plans to reduce the number of City churches, from which we learn that in the 1830s St Clement's had been under threat of demolition.
  The sweeping design of destroying a number of City churches was mediated in … 1834, and for the time arrested by the resolute opposition to the measure in the instance of the first church marked out for sacrifice, St. Clement Eastcheap, it may be feared is at length coming into full operation, not, indeed in the open manner in which it was displayed at that period, but in an insidious and more secure mode of procedure.
  While St Clement's was spared, the 19th century saw many other City churches being destroyed, particularly following the Union of Benefices Act (1860), which sought to speed-up the reduction in the number of City parishes as a response to rapidly declining congregations; the result of the resident population moving in ever larger numbers from cramped City conditions to the more spacious suburbs.
  In 1872 William Butterfield, a prominent architect of the gothic-revival, substantially renovated St. Clement's to conform with the contemporary Anglican 'High Church' taste. The renovation involved removing the galleries; replacing the 17th-century plain windows with stained glass; dividing the reredos into three pieces and placing the two wings on the side walls;  dismantling the woodwork to build new pews;  laying down polychrome tiles on the floor, and moving the organ into the aisle.
caption: Martin's Lane, looking north past St Martin Orgar church, 1831, engraved by Thomas Hosmer Shepherd (1793–1864)
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