Name: St. Giles in the Fields
Denomination: Anglican
Address: 60 St Giles High Street, London WC2H 8LG
Telephone: 020 7240 2532
Web Site: http://www.stgilesonline.org/
Email: Click Here
Please visit the website for times of services and details of other events.
St. Giles-in-the-Fields is a parish church in the heart of London’s West End.
The Church which is an outstandingly beautiful building, built in the Palladian style in 1734, is open daily Monday to Friday for prayer and to visitors, and for Sunday Services (opening times).
Newcomers to the church are always welcomed and the clergy provide pastoral care to those who live and work in the area, or who are just passing through. We are always willing to answer any questions which you might have about the Church, or the Christian Faith, please feel free to contact us.
History
St Giles teems with history. The present building is probably the fourth to have occupied the site since the Norman Conquest, for when Matilda, the English Queen of King Henry I and daughter-in-law of the Conqueror, founded her hospital for lepers ‘in the fields outside London’ she said that it was to be ‘where John of blessed memory used to be minister’, which must denote the existence there of a previous church or chapel.
The ancient name for what later became the parish of St Giles was ‘Aide Wych’ (old village), with its market-cross in High Holborn near the corner of Drury Lane. The Museum of London has recently shown by its excavations of Covent Garden, Saxon London, or Londenwic, lay hereabouts, between the two old Roman routes westwards from the city, High Holborn and the Strand. It is not inconceivable that St Giles churchyard, which is unusually large, may eventually prove to have been the cemetery of Saxon Londenwic.
Architecture
The St Giles Church which stands today was built by the architect Henry Flitcroft (son of William Ill’s gardener) and is the first example of Palladian Revival. The church was opened in 1734. It has a very beautiful interior, which underwent continual restoration during 1949-99.
Doctrine and style of worship
During the Twentieth Century, despite the Church of England’s experimentation with new forms of worship, only the Book of Common Prayer was used at the church. On this spiritual foundation traditional doctrinal teaching, and especially preaching continued long after it had ceased elsewhere, and it proved to be a policy which reaped great spiritual rewards – not least through its City-style lunch-hour services, to accommodate which the galleries had to be brought back into use:
Social outreach and facilities
Until 1963 St Giles had possessed its own Parochial School at the corner of High Holborn and Endel Street, for just over a century. After the Diocese of London closed the School in that year it was sold and the church lost at a stroke the centre of its social work, for the building was often in use as a parish hall. Moreover its clergy occupied the flats there and parishioners knew where to find them. Consequently 1963 was a watershed, and the whole situation changed. Happily, however, but only after some time, the School building became St Mungo’s hostel for homeless men, and so in some measure it continues its former sacred purpose.
The church itself, rigged in the old style for public worship, is a Grade I listed building, possessing, for social use, only its small Georgian historic Vestry Room, which before the Boroughs were born in 1900 was the HQ of the local parochial government under Vestrymen. Yet Camden council has refused permission for the erection in the churchyard of a beautifully designed new building which would have served the locality socially in the new century, and which could easily by arrangement, have been made available for use by Camden itself.
The most notable expression of the church’s spiritual work since the sale of the School asset in 1970 has been the 30 Annual Bible Schools (each of 8 sessions on Monday evenings during October-November) which have achieved an aggregate attendance of over 32,000, of all denominations, based on a continually revised mailing list, which covers much of Greater London. Only visiting lecturers are used, and a high standard was set from the start by the phenomenal Dr William Neil (famed for his superb ‘One Volume Commentary’) who was capable of attracting a large following for the first 7 years. When some years ago 8 Bishops spoke on what the Bible meant to them, there was a aggregate attendance of over 2,000, with Bishop Jenkins, then of Durham, drawing the greatest number (on the night before the Synod vote on the ordination of women). These lectures, which still continue, demonstrate the great hunger there is for Biblical education.