Fenchurch Street's parish church

Fenchurch Street Station is one of London’s forgotten termini. Lacking the grandeur of St. Pancras or Kings Cross and serving exclusively as the terminus of the London, Tilbury and Southend Railway (also known alarmingly as ‘Essex Thameside’), it seems fitting that the station serving Basildon should be relegated to such a sleepy corner of the Square Mile. But buildings are encroaching on Tower Ward. Down Fenchurch Street the Walkie-Talkie menaces the City, its upper floors distending out with lopsided spitefulness.

Ignore the atrocity behind

Around the corner from Fenchurch Street Station, off Mark Lane, an English country church seems to have got lost, perhaps bewildered by the colossal buildings surrounding it. This church is All Hallows Staining, though all that remains at this point is its tower. Its grubby name isn’t a reflection of the parish’s cleanliness but is instead derived from the word ‘Staniggencherch’, meaning stone church. Though it might seem evident, at the time of the church’s erection it was one of the few built of stone in London. First mentioned in the 12^th century, it was reconstructed around 1320. All Hallows Staining was one of the few City churches to survive the Great Fire, but evidently wanting a make-over like its sisters it collapsed only a few years later and was rebuilt in 1674. After 1870 the parishes of All Hallow Staining and St. Olave Hart Street were combined and the church demolished, except for the tower which continues to be maintained to this day by the Worshipful Company of Clothworkers.

There was still sun getting through so they're building higher

Having fought off the inferno of 1666, All Hallows Staining remains defiant to this day. With office blocks rising around ever higher like a swelling avalanche, it stands as an obstinate reminder of what the City once was, a living community.