No.16 St Clement Eastcheap

Warm autumn sun, not so much on at the office, so the perfect chance to do a full 2 hours on St Clement Eastcheap. It's not actually on Eastcheap any more, after 19th Century road planners built King William Street, it has a narrow frontage onto the narrow Clements Lane, with a tiny passage down one side leading to a sad scrap of a sunless yard and that's it. So, by soulless office block packed with city boys staring at screens, I sat down and started to draw.

In the medieval city, the market on this side became known as Eastcheap, Westcheap eventually becoming Cheapside. Cheap evolved from the Old English 'ceapan' meaning to buy.

These narrow streets do seem to work well for this series - the last two or three have been similar in composition and I like the way I can make the foreground buildings focus attention onto the church. Also, I don't have to draw masses of detailed architecture which, whilst being a great challenge, it's very time consuming. This location had a city bollard in the foreground again!

St Clement's fame stems from the 'Oranges and Lemons' rhyme which is assumed to refer to the exotic fruit arriving at wharves nearby. After the great fire, Sir Chris rebuilt it after negotiating with the city authorities who took the chance to widen the lane, and as a result the church is 15 feet east of it's medieval footings. He started in 1683 and finished in 1687. Two parishes were combined after the fire, meaning the building's full name is The Church of St Clement Eastcheap with St Martin Orgar. I don't think Wren took too much time over St Clement: the church is a simple room with a short bell tower, shorn of any dramatic Wrenian flourishes.

Maybe its position, tightly packed into a group of buildings protected St Clement during the war, only the south aisle suffering bomb damage in the blitz.

The church has some medieval bread shelves on the south wall. These were used by parishioners to leave bread for the poor of the parish and date back to well before the great fire.

I sat and drew for the most part undisturbed, but a city boy on his ciggy break came over, professed admiration and asked if he could commission me. I declined.

Map here
Old version of the rhyme here