St. George's Church, Bloomsbury

Infobox church
name = St. George's Church, Bloomsbury
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caption = Tower of St. George's, with a lion and unicorn and George I on the steeple
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denomination = Anglican
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architect = Nicholas Hawksmoor
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constructed_date = 1716-1731
dedicated_date = 1730
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address = London
country = United Kingdom
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St George's Church, Bloomsbury is a church in Bloomsbury in central London, England.

History

The Commissioners for the Fifty New Churches Act of 1711 realised that, due to rapid development in the Bloomsbury area during the latter part of the 17th and early part of the 18th centuries, the area (then part of the parish of St Giles in the Fields) needed to be split off and given a parish church of its own. They appointed Nicholas Hawksmoor, a pupil and former assistant of Sir Christopher Wren, to design and build this church, which he then did between 1716 and 1731. St George's was consecrated on 28 January 1730 by Edmund Gibson, Bishop of London.

Architecture

The stepped tower is influenced by Pliny the Elder's description of the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, and topped with a statue of King George I in Roman dress. Its statues of fighting lions and unicorns symbolise the recent end of the First Jacobite Rising. The Portico is based on that of the Temple of Bacchus in Baalbek, Lebanon.

In art and literature

The tower is depicted in William Hogarth's well-known engraving "Gin Lane" (1751). Charles Dickens used St George's as the setting for "The Bloomsbury Christening" in Sketches by Boz.

Famous parish events

The Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope was baptised here in 1824. Richard Meux Benson, founder of the first Anglican religious order for men, Society of St John the Evangelist, the "Cowley Fathers", was also baptised in the church. The funeral of Emily Davison, the suffragette who threw herself in front of the King's horse, took place here in 1913. Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethopia attended a controversial requiem for the dead of the Abyssinian war in 1937.

Recent restoration

It was until recently the subject of major conservation work led by the World Monuments Fund and closed to visitors, with the congregation continuing as normal in its parish life, holding services in a nearby chapel and then in the church using the new main doors in Bloomsbury Way (on Sundays at 10.30 and Wednesdays at 13.10). The building reopened fully from October 2006, including a new exhibition on the church, Hawksmoor and Bloomsbury housed in its undercroft.

External links

* [http://www.stgeorgesbloomsbury.org.uk Official website]
* [http://www.bluffton.edu/~sullivanm/england/london/hawksmoor/stgeorge.html Images of St George's, Bloomsbury]
* [http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,585-2375325.html Sunday Times article regarding the restoration]