Lovat Lane, EC3R

Anyone who wants a glimpse of what the City of London might have looked like before the ravages of the Second World War and the construction of the monstrous carbuncles the blight the skyline of the metropolis could do worse than take a walk down Lovat Lane. Running from Eastcheap from its northern end to Lower Thames Street at its southern extremity, it is a steep, narrow, semi-cobbled thoroughfare which has retained its pre-war width.

Its name was originally Love Lane but around 1939 it was changed to Lovat not in honour of the the 11^th Lord Lovat, whose fame was that in 1747 he was the last man to be beheaded in England at the Tower, but the Laird of that name who supplied the nearby fish market at Billingsgate with copious amount of salmon. Perhaps the change was to ensure that it was no longer confused with the Love Lane in EC2, a lane long frequented by prostitutes or, as John Snow termed it in his Survey of London, published in 1603, “so-called of wantons.” If so, they took a long time to clear up the confusion.

The stand-out feature of the street is the Church that is St Mary-at-Hill which still looms over the adjacent buildings. A church had stood on the site since the 12^th century and had a spire made of wood and lead. In 1479 Christopher the Carpenter was paid 20 shillings to remove the old spire and a further 53 shillings to rebuild it. In the process he used 800 boards, two tons of lead, nails and ironwork at a total cost of 14 shillings and seven pennies.

As was the custom with churches before the Reformation there was a rood, a crucifix set above the entrance to the chancel. In 1426 at the cost of £36 a new rood was installed. It must have been massive as a great stone arch was built to support it but even that was insufficient, the church having to underpin the arch in 1496 and fit three stays and a 50 pound “forthright dog of iron.”

Such works were funded by parishioners and the richer folk, keen to ensure their ticket to eternal bliss, added further embellishments. A Mistress Agnes Breten had the tabernacle of Our Lady painted and gilded in 1487 at the cost of £27 and in 1519 an unnamed parishioner paid £20 to have a large carved tablet hung over the high altar. The bottom fell out of the market for such objects after the Reformation and the church could only raise 4s 8d when they had to sell it.

Inevitably, given the construction of the building and its proximity to Pudding Lane, the church was severely damaged during the Great Fire of London in 1666 and was rebuilt. Although Sir Christopher Wren was responsible for the programme to rebuild the City’s churches, it was probably his underling, Robert Hooke, who designed and built St Mary.

And a fine job he made of it. There is a fine, wooden Last Judgement Relief which is a relative rarity in churches of that era and well worth a look. Equally impressive is the organ which dates to 1848, built by the London organ maker, William Hill, and reputed to be one of the ten most important organs to have been built in Britain.

But fire hadn’t finished with St Mary-At-Hill. Despite surviving the blitz relatively unscathed, a serious fire broke out in 1988 and the organ was severely damaged. It was painstakingly restored and rededicated in 2002.

A plaque in the churchyard, accessible through a side door in the church, informs us that the cemetery was closed for good on 21^st June 1846 and all the contents of the graves, vaults and crypts were removed to West Norwood cemetery. The pressure to use land more profitably in central London was always thus.

If after all this, you are tempted to seek refreshment at the Walrus and The Carpenter at the bottom of the Lane, look up. You will see a weather vane in the shape of a Bawley fishing boat of the type that used to ply the Thames catching whitebait.