St Ethelburga, Bishopsgate Street, London

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

To all intents and purposes, this is a tiny medieval church sandwiched between office blocks and cowering under the City's largest towers off of Bishopsgate. Early 20th Century photographs show it fronted by shops as at St Peter Cornhill and St Mary Moorgate, the large spectacles of the opticians particularly pleasing. This is what many small City churches were like at the start of the 20th Century.

Now, the conventional story of the City churches is one of medieval churches serving more than a hundred little parishes, the Great Fire coming along,and the consequent rebuilding of some of them, especially by Wren. Before the Great Fire, there were lots of little churches scattered throughout the City, but those on the edge like St Ethelburga survived the advance of the flames. However, many of them were later demolished, being in the way of huge building projects like the Bank of England, the Royal Exchange and Queen Victoria Street, and St Ethelburga was one of the few survivors. There was a major restoration in the early 20th Century by Ninian Comper, the rood screen being his, the glass too. As Simon Bradley notes, its atmosphere was that of a sleepy village church. The church survived the Blitz intact, and with its frontage onto Bishopsgate it was a visible reminder of the City's long past. It would be fair to say that it was much loved.

On Saturday 24th April 1993, the Irish Republican Army parked a one tonne ammonium nitrate/fuel oil bomb in a truck outside the front of St Ethelburga. Warnings were given more than an hour before the device was timed to go off - as with the Baltic Exchange bomb the previous year, the main idea of the attack was to cause as much damage to buildings as possible. When it exploded just before half past ten, the little church was vaporised. All that survived was the arcade and part of the south wall.

The explosion caused more than £350 million worth of damage in the Square Mile - the Baltic Exchange bombing a hundred yards off the previous year had caused £800 million worth of damage. There's no doubt that the insurance companies told the Major government that the City was unsustainable if further attacks continued. A ring of steel was enforced around the Square Mile, and by 1997 the Good Friday agreement had been signed. But where did this leave St Ethelburga? A number of schemes were put forward, including that the site should be enclosed in a glass box as a memorial to the victims of terrorism. However, it was eventually decided that the church should be rebuilt as far as possible on its original lines, and that is how you see it today. Many of the furnishings salvaged from the wreckage were reinstated, although of course the Comper glass was lost. The church is now a centre for reconciliation and peace. I noticed recently that it is also being used for the services of the Orthodox Church on a Saturday evening.