Barbican Living
St Giles' Terrace
"The forecourt of St Giles' Church stands on a peninsular of land partly surrounded at a lower level by the decorative water and is flanked by the buildings of the City of London School for Girls and the row of houses to the south. The ruins of London wall rise out of the ditch and the public open space stretching to Route 11 [London Wall] can be seen from the Church forecourt."
Chamberlin, Powell & Bon, Architects, "Barbican Redevelopment" April 1959
I like fireworks. As a child, I waved roman candles and nailed cannon wheels onto planks for Guy Fawkes night. And I remember going right down to St Pauls to watch a fantastic display on a barge in the Thames one Winter about 15 years ago . But you can have too much of a good thing. Almost every other week someone or other puts on a fireworks display on St Giles Terrace on a Saturday night. What can it be for? It's like living in Beirut some weekends. I sit here forced to listen to the bangs - missing the finer points of Big Brother House – and I dream of raking St Giles Terrace with machine-gun fire, but I just don't have a clear view. Anyway, enough of my complaints, and on to what the architects intended.
The architects designed the terrace round St Giles' Church to stretch right back to Wallside and its houses. In the end, the lake was extended from Mountjoy House almost to The Postern and so separated the terrace from Wallside by a moat (for which the residents are no doubt grateful, given the proximity of Crowder's Well pub). "Route 11" was the name of the newly-constructed London Wall. As promised, from the terrace you can still see across gardens and Romantic bits of old city wall as far as the less Romantic dual carriageway London Wall.
The church yard surrounding the church was built as a brick bastion, with broad steps down to the lake, 2.8 meters below. Gas lamps from Tower Bridge were sited along the waterside. There are brick plinths for seating, which the faithful of the church must share with the faithful of the pub.
Chamberlain Powell and Bon drew on the fact that the typical village pub was traditionally built next to the church in ye olde England.
Less traditionally, the architects incorporated a montage of gravestones into the plinths and the sides of the walls, adding a shot of memento mori to the lunchtime drink. The grave-stones are a valuable habitat for lichens and mosses.
An ancient Cracked Willow used to stand outside the entrance to St Giles Church. It was probably 18 feet in circumference. As its name implies, cracked willow branches fall off from time to time. A tree surgeon comes round every year and inspects all the trees. Apparently there was a risk of branches falling on the lunchtime clientele of Crowder’s Well. I don’t know why that was seen as a problem, but anyway the tree was cut down. Now there’s not so much as a stump to abandon a dirty beer glass on.
From time to time herons have been spotted, apparently living on St Giles’ roof where they have a good view of lunch swimming in the lake below.
