ST. PETER-LE-POER

ST. PETER-LE-POER is not to be reckoned in the melan

choly list of destroyed Wren Churches, as is the Church of St. George, Botolph Lane, elsewhere described in this book. The older Church on this site escaped destruction by the Fire, and lasted until 1788, when the building, of which the front is here figured, was erected from the design of Jesse Gibson and consecrated in 1792 by Bishop Porteous, only to be destroyed quite lately with the assent of his latest successor in the See.

The title of the Church has been much discussed. Choosing the more obvious solution, Stow suggested that it was "sometime peradventure a poor parish," though in his time it contained "many fair houses." Possibly "Poer" is a corruption of "Parvus," which was a part of its designation in certain old documents. The building as we knew it was not rightly orientated, but stood north and south. It was circular in form, with a recessed sanctuary on the north side, the basement storey of the tower forming an entrance porch on the south. The interior was lighted by means of a large lantern with glazed sides, rising from the middle of the ceiling. The only portion of the Church that was visible was the tower front on the north side of Old Broad Street. Not among the most beautiful of our City Churches, it was yet worthy of a better fate than that which has befallen it. No one seeing the drawing of this can think that Old Broad Street is the better for its

disappearance. One of the Rectors of St. Peter-le-Poer was Richard Holdsworth, Dean of Worcester, who ministered to Charles I when he was a prisoner at Carisbrooke, and whose monument-for he was buried here was at the entrance to the organ gallery. It appears, however, to have been forgotten at the time the Church was rebuilt, as has been shown above, and lay neglected in the vaults for a century. A later Rector was the Whig Divine, Dr. Benjamin Hoadly, Bishop successively of Bangor, Hereford, Salisbury and Winchester, and famous for his polemical writings. The Bangorian controversy, associated with his Bangor episcopate, resulted in the suppression of Convocation for more than a century. A. R.