(No.1828, Sunday, April 10, 1831.)

The Church of St. Michael, Crooked-Lane.

The Church, which is now being taken down for the approaches to the new London-bridge, and in which a great alarm took place on the last performance of divine worship, has become an object of much curiosity. The following account of it is taken from "Elmes's Topographical Dictionary of London" —
"St. Michael, Crooked-lane, the Church of, is situated on the east side of Miles's-lane, Great Eastcheap, and is so called from its dedication and from its immediate vicinity to Crooked-lane, Old Fish-street. This Church is of ancient foundation, for John de Borham appears to have been rector, and the church dedicated to St. Michael, before the year 1304. It was then a very small Church, and stood amidst lay-stalls and slaughter-grounds, used by the butchers of Eastcheape market. In 1336, John Loveken, four times Lord Mayor of London, obtained a grant of the ground, and build a handsome and capacious Church thereon, which received several additions and benefactions from Sir Wm. Walworth, Lord Mayor in 1374, and formerly servant to Loveken.

"This Church having been destroyed by the fire of London, was rebuilt in 1687 by Sir Christopher Wren. The interior, which is 78 feet long, by 46 broad, and 32 high, is a fine specimen of a metropolitan parish church, is well lighted by wide and lofty semicircular headed windows, and the pews well distributed for seeing and hearing the minister. The tower is of Portland stone, about 100 feet high, crowned with a perforated parapet, with vases at its angles, from the centre of which rises a lofty, well-proportioned, and remarkably picturesque steeple, with a clock, a vane, and a cross. This handsome Church is under sentence of condemnation for standing in the line of the New London Bridge, and the bill is now (November 1830) pending in Parliament to take it down.

"The patronage of this church was anciently in the Prior and Convent of Canterbury, in whom it continued till 1408, since which time it has been in the Archbishops of that see, and is one of the thirteen peculiars within the city, belonging to that Archbishop. Among the ancient monuments preserved in this Church, is that of Sir William Walworth, who slew Wat Tyler, in Smithfield; one to the memory of Queen Elizabeth; and the following concise epitaph on the tomb of a parishioner: —

'Here lyeth, wrapped in clay,
'The body of William Wray,
'I have no more to say. '

"The Church is a rectory, in the city of London, in the province of Canterbury, exempt from archidiaconal jurisdiction, being a peculiar, and in the patronage of the Archbishop of Canterbury. The present rector is the Rev. W. Dakins, D.D. Vicar of Asheldam, who was instituted in 1816."