St Matthew, Bethnal Green

About

St Matthew's, Bethnal Green, is an 18th-century church in Bethnal Green, London, England. It is an Anglican church in the Diocese of London.

History of the building: The church was built 1743–46, to a Classical design by George Dance the Elder. There is a tower, to the centre of the west end, rising above a pedimented, slightly advanced central section. Dance's design was not the first: Nicholas Hawksmoor had produced a plan for the 1711 Commission for Building Fifty New Churches, but, like most of the ambitious target, it failed to come to fruition. A fire in 1859 destroyed the interior of the church, although the registers and the church plate were saved. It was rebuilt (including a cupola being added to the tower) in 1861 to a design by Thomas Knightley. The roof and interior were destroyed by enemy action in 1940. A temporary church was created within the shell in 1954 by A Wontner Smith and Harold Jones. The old church was rebuilt from 1958 to 1961 (without the side galleries) by Anthony Lewis of Michael Tapper & Lewis, with what the list entry describes as a 'bold post-war interior'. That post-war interior includes works by a roll-call of eminent 20th-century ecclesiastical...