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St Peter's, London Docks

19th-century Church of England church buildingsBuildings by F. H. PownallChurch of England church buildings in the London Borough of Tower HamletsChurches bombed by the Luftwaffe in LondonDiocese of London
Grade I listed buildings in the London Borough of Tower HamletsGrade I listed churches in LondonWapping
South Face of the Church of Saint Peter near Wapping (01)
South Face of the Church of Saint Peter near Wapping (01)

St Peter's, Wapping, is a Grade I listed Anglican church in Wapping Lane, Wapping, London, E1W 2RW. It was built in 1865–1939, designed by F. H. Pownall.The church was the first Anglican mission to the poor of London. Work was begun in 1856 by the Revd Charles Lowder MA and a group of priests, all were members of the Society of the Holy Cross. The Society had been founded a year earlier with the express purpose of banding priests to a common rule of life and prayer in mission service.Wapping was one of the poorest districts in London, a haunt of prostitutes and petty criminals, living alongside those who earned a precarious living from the docks. Lowder's work began in Lower Well Alley (now the park by the James Orwell sports centre) and moved to an iron church in Calvert Street (now Tench Street). Lowder's group of Clergy and Sisters provided practical care through schools, clubs, cheap canteens and child care and spiritual care through a wide range of services, centred on the Mass at the Mission Churches. In 1866 the new Church of St Peter was consecrated. Soon afterwards cholera struck the East End. Lowder organised Sisters of Mercy and others to care for the sick and raised funds for a tented hospital. The Priests and Sisters took great risks and worked without stint for the people of Wapping. At the end of the cholera people were calling Lowder, ‘the Father’ because he seemed like the father of the whole community.After Lowder's death in 1880, Maurice Bingham Adams was engaged to design extensions in his memory. In 1884-94 a mortuary, chapel and baptistry were all added.Further work was done to the church in the 1930s, and finished in 1940, only to be immediately destroyed by a bomb in the Blitz. Repairs were completed in 1949. The church was completely renovated in 1985.Now it is used for church services in the area of Wapping and has a regular Thursday attendance from the nearby school whom uses this church which is St Peter's London Docks Primary.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article St Peter's, London Docks (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

St Peter's, London Docks
Wapping Lane, London Wapping

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N 51.506159 ° E -0.058161 °
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St Peter's London Docks

Wapping Lane
E1W 2RW London, Wapping
England, United Kingdom
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South Face of the Church of Saint Peter near Wapping (01)
South Face of the Church of Saint Peter near Wapping (01)
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St George in the East
St George in the East

St George-in-the-East is an Anglican Church dedicated to Saint George and one of six Hawksmoor churches in London, England. It was built from 1714 to 1729, with funding from the 1711 Act of Parliament. Its name has been used for two forms of parish (areas of land) surrounding, one ecclesiastical which remains and one a Civil counterpart, a third tier of local government. The latter assisted public facilities in the late 19th century but ceded its dwindling purposes to the Metropolitan Borough of Stepney so was abolished in 1927. The church was designated a Grade I listed building in 1950.In the 1850s, Archibald Campbell Tait, then Bishop of London, appointed a Low Church lecturer, which was contrary to the High Church attitude of the rector and curate. As a protest, there were catcalls and horn blowing, and some male members of the congregation went into the church smoking their pipes, keeping their hats on, and leading barking dogs. Refuse was thrown onto the altar. The church was closed for a while in 1859, and the rector, owing to his poor health, was persuaded by the author Tom Hughes to hand over his duties to a locum.The church was hit by a bomb during the Second World War Blitz on London's docklands in May 1941. The original interior was destroyed by the fire, but the walls and distinctive "pepper-pot" towers stayed up. In 1964 a modern church interior was constructed inside the existing walls, and a new flat built under each corner tower. Ian Nairn wrote of it in his 1966 guide to London: “A ruin among ruins, in the lost part of Stepney [after the Blitz, and before being blitzed by the Borough Council?] ... The old life has gone ... the new has not yet come ... It makes no difference to Hawksmoor’s bizarre poetry. This is probably the hardest building to describe in London ... This is a stage somewhere beyond fantasy ... it is the more-than-real world of the drug addict’s dream.”The church still has an active congregation. In May 2015, the parish entered into a partnership with the Centre for Theology and Community (CTC), an ecumenical charity which is based in its East Crypt. Anglican clergy working for CTC now serve the parish, and the second floor is the home to the Community of St George, a group of lay Christians who assist in the worship and mission of the church. St George-in-the-East is located on Cannon Street Road, between The Highway and Cable Street, in the East End of London. Behind the church lies St George's Gardens, the original graveyard, which was passed to Stepney Council to maintain as a public park in mid-Victorian times. In 1836, the parish of St George in the East was constituted as a Poor Law parish under the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834. It appeared in the 1980 film The Long Good Friday starring Bob Hoskins. It also appeared in S02E01 of Killing Eve.