St Matthew’s, Bethnal Green
St Matthew’s, Bethnal Green, is perhaps one of London’s more remarkable churches. It has a colourful history drawing in such diverse characters such as staggeringly corrupt churchwarden Joseph Merceron, the Krays and radical priest Stewart Headlam. The church, surviving for two and a half centuries in one of London’s poorer areas, has also had to contend with the Luftwaffe, locals organising bull- and bear-baiting in the churchyard and resurrection men raiding the graves.
Until the 18th century, Bethnal Green hadn’t needed a church of its own. The little hamlet was the only development in the countryside east of the City walls. It became a fashionable place to live - Samuel Pepys fled to the Bethnal Green mansion of his friend William Ryder to escape the Great Fire. But the city had been slowly encroaching, with Spitalfields becoming a centre for brickmaking in the late 1500s, and the influx of Huguenots (and a consequent boom in the weaving industry) swelling the population towards the end of the 17th century.
Up till then, Bethnal Green has been part of the parish of Stepney, and the Stepney rector was happy to keep it that way - the income from tithes from the new population was, of course, growing by the month. The local people weren’t to keen on a new church either, realising that they would bear the cost of building. But the church commissioners pressed ahead, and Nicholas Hawksmoor, who had already built St George-in-the-East, Christ Church Spitalfields and St Anne Limehouse in what is now Tower Hamlets, produced typically idiosyncratic plans during the 1690s.
But it was to be 1725 before the Church finally sealed the deal, paying £200 for a section of Hare Fields, at the heart of the new Huguenot community, and some way west of the original hamlet. Financial problems ensued, and it was 1742, with Hawksmoor six years dead, before the church finally got the go ahead, with a smaller and less expensive design by George Dance. Money ran out again, and an Act of Parliament was passed in 1745 to raise the cash to finish the job. The wording of the Act began ‘The want of a place for public worship of Almighty God hath been a great cause of increase of dissoluteness of morals and a disregard for religion, too apparent in the younger and poorer sort.’
The dissoluteness of morals was to be very apparent in the decades to come. On Sundays in the mid-18th century, there were often several hundred locals attending bear and bull baiting contests in the field next to the church … rather more than there were inside. On one occasion, a terrified bull ran into church during the morning service. And with the new hospitals’ demands for bodies for dissection, it became a constant battle to stop the bodysnatchers or ‘resurrection men’ targeting the churchyard for fresh supplies. In 1754, a watch house was built, and a reward of two guineas given for anyone catching a bodysnatcher. The watchmen were paid 10s and 6d a week and given a blunderbuss with which to shoot the miscreants - though they had to sound a rattle first. The churchwardens hold the right to this day!
The infamous Joseph Merceron became Churchwarden in the early 1800s and proceeded to line his pockets from the parish - he was jailed for 18 months in 1818 for stealing £1000 from public funds. The sentence was lenient enough anyway, but on his release Merceron took back his old duties, fleecing the parish until his death in 1861. In stark contrast, Stewart Headlam was a man of such unshakeable morality that he was too much for the Church of England. His blend of Christianity and Socialism, preaching against the rich, saw him dismissed from a succession of posts, and he was sacked as curate of St Matthew’s in 1878.
In 1859, the interior of the church was gutted by fire, and the building was refurbished and reopened in 1861. Then, in 1940, enemy bombing left St Matthew’s without a roof. A temporary church was built within the walls, and the permanently repaired church was then re-consecrated on 15 July 1961. In recent years, the church was the venue for a succession of lavish, old-style East End funerals, as hundreds gathered to say goodbye, in turn, to Ronnie, Charlie and Reggie Kray, and ‘Firm’ member Tony Lambrianou.
London History: 100 faces of the East End, by John Rennie, available now, ISBN 1411666089