Church of St Anne and St Agnes Greater London hotels:

A Christopher Wren church used by the Lutheran Church with many lunchtime concerts and musical services. Lutheran services Sunday, 1100 and 1900 and designated Weekdays. Lunchtime concerts (free with collection) Monday and Friday, 1310 (not during August and school holidays). St Anne & St Agnes: From the Twelfth Century to the Great Fire of 1666: The first mention of a church on the present site is in documents of around 1150 which refer to 'St Agnes near Alderychgate' and the 'priest of St Anne's' which was situated near Aldredesgate'. There was confusion over the name since the church was described variously as St Anne and as St Agnes. For the first century or so the church appears to have been called St Agnes. Certainly by 1467 comes the first mention of 'SS. Anne and Agnes within Aldrichesgate'. St Anne and St Agnes are not usually linked. St Anne, grandmother of Christ, is venerated in Brittany and Cornwall; St Agnes was a 13-year-old girl martyred in Rome about 300AD. John de Chilmerk is the first known rector whose dates are certain (1322-26); the parish had 300 communicants during the reign of Edward VI; and in its Norman tower hung five great bells and one small one. The church was gutted by a fire in 1548 but was rebuilt soon after. Further work was done in 1624 when the church was 'richly and very worthily beautified'. The steeple was repaired 'with great care and much cost' five years later. The Great Fire of London in 1666 devastated whole areas of the City. St Anne and St Agnes was only one of the many churches destroyed. From Christopher Wren to the Twentieth Century: Sir Christopher Wren (1632-1723), the most famous architect of the time, undertook the rebuilding of St Paul's Cathedral and 51 of the City churches - a tremendous thirty-five years' task. Today some twenty churches remain more or less as he designed them. St Anne and St Agnes was the eleventh church to be built by Wren. He planned it in the form of a Greek cross - perhaps influenced by the Niewe Kerk in Haarlem in the Netherlands. The tower had survived the fire and was incorporated in the new design. John Fitch of the Grocers' Company was the contractor, the work cost £2,448, and the building was rehallowed in 1680.