The elegant 100ft tower of All Hallows, designed by Sir Christopher Wren, rises above the leafy streets of Twickenham in Middlesex. It was built in 1686 – but not here, for the tower was brought from Lombard Street in the City of London in 1939.
Bombing during the Second World War reduced 20 City churches to a shell, but the ecclesiastical authorities had demolished a greater number in the preceding years of peace – many in the late 19th century.
All Hallows Lombard Street was demolished during the long incumbency (1901-1939) of Arthur Winnington-Ingram as Bishop of London. Nicknamed "Chuckles" at school, he encouraged with his ebullient character the policy, made possible by the Union of Benefices Act 1860, of demolishing City churches, selling the sites and with the money building new churches in the suburbs. A good handbook is still Vanished Churches of the City of London by Gordon Huelin (Guildhall Library, £5.95)
Thus St Katherine Coleman, in Fenchurch Street, which had escaped the Fire of London in 1666, was pulled down in 1926, and a new church dedicated to St Katherine built on a housing estate in Hammersmith. Unfortunately the new church was destroyed by bombing. Its replacement, called St Katharine, differently spelt, was built in 1959 and, of all the fittings brought from the City, only the altar rails, now in the Blessed Sacrament chapel, survive.
Of another church that survived the Fire of London, All Hallows Staining, the medieval tower can still be seen in Mark Lane in the City. It was saved by the Clothworkers' Company in 1873, when the rest of the church was pulled down. With money from the sale of the site, All Hallows, Bow, was built, but this too was bombed in the Second World War. Its replacement in Devons Road, built in the mid 1950s, reused the core of the Victorian church, but in 2001 the nave was divided off to provide a hall.
More fortunate has been St Benet Fink, Tottenham, built in 1911, in brick with stone facings, with the help of money from the sale of the Wren church by that name in the City, which was demolished in 1844, to make room for the rebuilt Royal Exchange. In that church John Henry Newman had been baptised in 1801. Some controversy accompanied its demolition and the auctioning of its fittings.
The parish was united with that of St Peter le Poer, which had escaped the Fire and been rebuilt in the 18th century. But in 1907 it was demolished to widen the street. Again, money from its sale went to the building of a suburban church, St Peter le Poer, Friern Barnet, a pleasing red-brick building with pitched tile roofs.
In Twickenham, All Hallows has a font taken from St Benet Gracechurch, a neighbouring church in the City built by Wren and demolished in 1867 for road-widening. Money from the sale of St Benet went to the building of a church with the same dedication in Mile End Road, in the East End, which was destroyed by bombing in 1940. A round church built in 1962 on the Mile End Road site became St Benet's Chaplaincy for what is now curiously called Queen Mary, University of London. The chapel has striking gold-on-black sgraffito panels depicting seven scenes from the book of Revelation.
All Hallows, Twickenham, also has monuments from St Dionis Backchurch, a Wren church whose parish was united, on its demolition in 1878, with All Hallows Lombard Street. But the font and pulpit from St Dionis Backchurch are now at St Dionis, Parsons Green, in west London, built in 1884 from the sale of its site.
As for All Hallows Lombard Street, its site was enveloped by Barclays when it extended its headquarters, which were transformed for the last time by the construction of a 17‑storey "skyline signature" building, completed in 1994. The next year, Barclays' HQ was transferred out of town to Docklands, rather like some unwanted City church.