File:Wonderful London (1927) 44 – St Augustine Watling Street.jpg

St Augustine Watling Street, New Change, London

Photogravure by Donald Macleish from Wonderful London by St John Adcock, 1927.

Until the Second World War, St Paul's Cathedral was hemmed in by narrow, busy streets, a working modern city on a medieval plan. These streets were home to dozens of little churches, their turrets, spires and finials, by the genius of Wren and his collaborators, working as a tribute and foil to the great bulk of the cathedral overshadowing them. The church was a medieval foundation of the 12th Century, destroyed in the Great Fire and rebuilt by Wren in the 1680s. The tower finial appears to have been Hawksmoor's design.

No church was closer to the rebuilt St Paul's, and although the Cathedral withstood the German bombs of 1940 and 1941, its little neighbour did not. Only the tower survived, restored by Seely & Paget in 1966 (the curent finial is theirs) and incorporated into Leo de Syllas's uncompromisingly modernist building for the Cathedral Choir School in 1968. It all works rather well.

St Augustine got its dedication because it stands at the London end of Watling Street, the road from Canterbury. Travellers and returning pilgrims could stop here on first entering the City to give thanks to Canterbury's own Saint for their safe journey. Although rebuilt, it is still possible to walk westwards up the line of Watling Street and see the safe haven of the church's spire ahead of you, the great cathedral beyond.