A new pop-up exhibition in four of the Square Mile Churches will reveal fascinating facts and rarely seen details of the lives of people who lived and worked in the City of London during its rebuilding after the Great Fire of 1666, up to 1726.
The project, supported by the London Diocesan Fund and the National Lottery Heritage Fund, is part of the ongoing Wren300 national festival, which marks the 300th anniversary of the architect Sir Christopher Wren’s death at the age of 91 in 1723.
The exhibition consists of displays in four historic churches in London’s Square Mile, which include three rebuilt by Wren – St Bride in Fleet Street, St Martin Ludgate, St Vedast alias Foster in Foster Lane – and St Botolph Aldgate, which was unaffected by the Fire. Visitors can explore a variety of themes that reveal the stories behind the huge task facing Wren and a multitude of skilled workers, such as stonemasons, carpenters, joiners and glaziers, to rebuild the City of London.
Drawing on a wealth of archival sources and historical images, the exhibition will bring to the fore some of the people who once lived, worked and walked on the very same streets around the participating churches.
A City Full of People is even more remarkable because it has not directly been produced by academics or professional historians. Rather it is the culmination of many hours of work by a team of volunteer researchers, who were recruited especially for the Wren300 commemorations and had no prior experience, other than a deep interest in local history and their home city’s heritage. They were led and guided by the historians Dr Susan Skedd and Dr Rebecca Preston.
Given hands-on access to manuscripts in a number of archives, the research team members were encouraged to pursue their own areas of interest and lines of investigation. As a result, some fascinating details emerged, often revealing hitherto unknown historical detail.
The exhibition also allows us to consider the contributions of people who did not achieve great fame for their work, unlike Wren himself. For the first time, the contribution of female artisans are highlighted and explored.
One little-known aspect of the City of London’s history was that widows of citizens were allowed to remain trading after their husband’s death. Hannah Brace, for example, continued her husband John’s glazing business after he died. She was paid £72 17s 10d (£8,293 today) for glazing thirty oval, round, and square windows, and six casement windows in St Bride’s Church. Other glaziers who worked on the City Churches included Sarah and Samuel Rainger, and Elizabeth and George Peowrie.
At the same time as Wren led the church rebuilding programme, he also understood the need to provide modern spaces for people to grow and sell foodstuffs in their immediate communities. Before the Great Fire, food markets had lined busy routes, causing congestion and leaving behind food and other waste to rot. The need to rebuild now provided an opportunity to create dedicated market places and, with this in mind, the City Corporation bought up land and paid for four new markets to be built, all with hygienic facilities. Newgate, Honey Lane, Woolchurch and Leadenhall all had drainage, storage areas, and regular rubbish collections which made the markets much cleaner and safer for stallholders and customers.
These new markets allowed people to buy all sorts of different items from farmers and traders, all in the same location. Women were allowed to be stallholders as well as men, with daughters sometimes inheriting from their mothers. Mary Hind, Anne Burgin, Judith Crozks and Margaret Holme all had stalls in the Green Yard of Leadenhall, selling the fish they had bought wholesale from Billingsgate Market.
At the same time, the rebuilding of London’s streets included planting trees and other greenery. This was, in part to create a more pleasant environment and cleaner air. Seed merchants, such as Charles Blackwell at Fetter Lane, took advantage of the new interest in gardens, while nurseries also sprang up at Whitechapel and Hoxton, supplying home-grown plants, as well as those imported from Europe and overseas colonies.
Perhaps some three centuries ahead of his time, in his book The City Gardener, Hackney nurseryman Thomas Fairchild argued that public squares should be planted in a wilderness style, offering birds safe havens, and residents areas in which to walk in shade and privacy.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the City at night and especially during weekends, was virtually empty. With no immediate community visible or being catered for. Today, that’s a very different story and we can now see how the City employs people in a huge variety of different ways. Similarly, Wren’s rebuilding of the churches created opportunities for contractors such as the master masons and carpenters, many of whom, as the exhibition reveals, prospered greatly as a result, and the people they employed. As the displays demonstrate, the City has been renowned for centuries as a place of great wealth, but in Wren’s time this was not exclusively from banking or international trade but rather from supplying the City’s reconstruction; whether with materials and skills, or feeding and clothing the workforce.
The exhibition also explores the lives of people living in each of the four parishes, including the churchwardens who were the key decision-makers. Two churchwardens at St Martin’s are commemorated on the remarkable double chair that stands in the church today. Thomas Pistor was a wealthy cabinet maker who lived in Ludgate Hill, and Thomas Saffold was a weaver turned astrologer. Their initials are carved onto the chair made by joiner William Gray in around 1690, but we don’t know if they ever sat in it together. Churchwardens were also responsible for the welfare of local residents and made payments to the poorest and most vulnerable in the parish. However, not everyone was given support. Individuals described as ‘burdensome’ in one area could be returned to their home parish. Thomas Mason was gifted 10 shillings (£57) if he promised to never return to the parish of St Martin Ludgate. Anne Waterfall was not even given this amount of ‘help’. The minutes of St Martin’s simply say that she was to be ‘removed’, with her ‘bastard child’, named Sarah.
Dr Susan Skedd, who co-led the A City Full of People research team says: “Visitors to the four churches will be able to see a series of illustrated panels that reveal our researchers’ findings and the stories they uncovered. Through written narratives they positively breathe life back into long-forgotten people who made their own, lasting contributions to the City of London. These stories will also form an online exhibition, which can be seen from December on www.wren300.org”.

A City Full of People can be seen in the following churches:
• St Bride’s, Fleet Street: Monday to Friday, 8.00am – 5.00pm, Saturday, 10.00am -4.00pm; Sunday, 9.30am – 6.30pm.
• St Martin Ludgate: Monday to Wednesday, 9.00am-5.00pm, Thursdays and Fridays, 11.00am and 3.00pm
• St Vedast alias Foster, Foster Lane: Monday to Friday, 8.00am – 3.00pm; Sunday: 11.00am for Eucharist Service.
• St Botolph Aldgate: Monday to Thursday, 9.00am – 5.00pm; Sunday, 10.30am for Service.