Plaque: Christ Church Spitalfields - western entrance
Erection date: 1877
Christchurch Spitalfields
The western entrance to this church was altered and improved and the ornamental ironwork enclosure fixed in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and seventy seven.
Samuel Bardsley MA – Rector & Rural Dean
Cornelius Barham, Richard Joseph Dodson – Churchwardens
Samuel William Iron - Architect
Thomas Peters – Contractor
The western entrance is this porch but we can find no details of how it was improved in 1877, nor can we find anything about the architect, W. S. Iron.
Site: Christ Church Spitalfields - porch (3 memorials)
E1, Commercial Street, Christ Church Spitalfields - porch
Church, erected 1714 - 29, by Hawksmoor. Church website. The church has a history of selecting nominatively-determined architects: Ewan Christian and Samuel William Iron (see Isambard Brunel for more.)
These 3 plaques are inside the porch: 'fire' and 'alterations' on the back wall, with 'western entrance' on the left side wall.
This 1890 map is useful.
The rest of the text here comes from a modern information board in the garden to the south of the church:
Christ Church Gardens - Purchased by the church commissioners from the Heath distillery family for £600 in 1711, they stretched from Brick Lane in the east to the back of the houses in Red Lyon Street in the west. By 1732 the engine house occupied the south west corner with Christ Church School standing in the north west corner of the gardens.
An 1838 parliamentary report described Spitalfields as one of the poorest, most overcrowded and most crime-ridden districts in London: harbouring “an extremely immoral population”. During 1843-45 Red Lyon Street and its slums were cleared to make way for the new Commercial Street which now runs alongside the church gardens. In June 1859 the churchyard was closed to burials and dedicated as a ‘lawn or ornamental ground’ with a new school building at the east end on Brick Lane opening in 1873.
In 1888 trams began running along Commercial Street, and in 1891 the local authority undertook the garden maintenance, however by 1903 the gardens were widely known as Itchy park; a notorious rendezvous for homeless men seeking casual work in the fruit market.
During the 1900’s the gardens housed a small park, an adventure playgound and a youth club. Entered through the gardens, the church crypt was used as an air raid shelter during the war. Today the gardens still provide space for rest and renewal in the lee of what many believe to the architect Nicholas Hawksmoor’s finest church building.
There are 4 other plaques on the outside of this church: 2 at the entrance to the crypt, on the south side of the porch, and 2 more on the north side.
