Temple Church, Inner Temple Lane, London

case study 10 Temple Church, Inner Temple Lane, London

Norman in origin Church of Inner and Middle Temple, Inns of Court Architect of refurbishment: Christopher Wren (1632–1723) See St Peter Cornhill (CS9) for information on Sir Christopher Wren

Historical note

The Temple consists of two societies established for the study and practice of law: the Inner Temple and the Middle Temple. Although both communities function separately and have their own buildings on the site, they both use the same church, known as Temple Church, a reference to its Templar origin. The church was “repaired, adorned and beautified at the joynt expense of the two honourable societies” as praised by John Standish in his sermon after the reopening in 1683. The round church is exemplar for the Templars and is Norman in architecture, while the choir is early English. The church underwent subsequent repairs and escaped destruction in several fires in 1666, 1677, 1678.1 In 1682 the church was beautified according to “The New View of London” following the reconstruction of many city churches after the Great Fire. A negative descrip- tion of the seventeenth-century alterations is given by Thornbury in 1878.

In the reign of Charles II the body of the church was filled with formal pews, which concealed the bases of the columns, while the walls were encumbered, to the height of eight feet from the ground, with oak wain- scoting, which was carried entirely around the church, so as to hide the elegant marble piscine, the interesting almeries over the high altar and the sacrarium on the eastern side of the edifice. The elegant Gothic arch- es connecting the round with the square church were choked up with an oak screen, and glass window and doors, and with an organ gallery adorned with Corinthian columns, pilasters, and Grecian ornament, which divided the building in two parts, altogether altered its original

1 Henry A. Harben, A Dictionary of London (London: H Jenkins LTD, 1918). British History Online, accessed March 19, 2016, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/dictionary-of-london.

character and appearance, and sadly marring its architectural beauty. The eastern end of the church was at the same time disfigured by an enormous altarpiece in the classic style, decorated with Corinthian columns and Grecian cornices and entablatures, and with enrichments of cherubims and wreaths of fruit, flowers and leaves, heavy and cumbrous and quite at variance with the Gothic character of the building. A large pulpit and carved sounding-board were erected in the middle of the dome, and the walls within were encrusted and disfigured with hideous mural monuments and pagan trophies of forgotten wealth and vanity.2

Early in the nineteenth century the first steps were taken to the restoration of the church. The seventeenth-century alterations were undone. The genu- ine restoration took place in 1845. However, the removal of the seventeenth- century “beautifications and adornments” was regarded by some as an act of vandalism.3 Although the church had escaped the Great Fire, John Playford, the clerk of the church, reported the urgent need for repairs to the Inns in 1675. He listed four concerns: “the doors of the screen which parts the church are at this time … decayed and broken”; “the pulpit is so rotten … as it is in great dan- ger of falling”; “the two bells in the steeple were both cracked and useless; and the two surplices were both worn out.”4 In January 1678 or 1679 a fire broke out in the Middle Temple and reached the church’s west end. In 1682 Christopher Wren reported on the state of the church and he was hired to rebuild part of the interior, as described above.5 In his design, Wren not only forced classical features into the medieval structure, he also accommodated the liturgical space of the church according to the liturgical preferences of the Restoration Church which he had also introduced in the city churches. The new design included an organ gallery, black-and-white diamond paving, a raised floor level in the chancel and a classical altarpiece.6 Also important to the classical design was the church’s or the Inn’s legal history. In the seventeenth century, the Inns still claimed ancient legal associations

2 Walter Thornbury, Old and New London (London: Cassell, Petter & Galpin, 1878), vol. 1. British History Online, accessed March 18, 2016, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/old-new-london/ vol1. 3 Thornbury, Old and New London, vol. 1. 4 F.A. Inderwick, ed., A Calendar of the Inner Temple Records (London, 1091), vol. 3 as quoted in: Robin Griffith Jones, “‘An Enrichment of Cherubims’: Christopher Wren’s Refurbishment of the Temple Church,” in The Temple Church in London: History, Architecture, Art, eds. Robin Griffith Jones and David Park (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2010), 136. 5 Jones, “An Enrichment of Cherubims,” 136. 6 Jones, “An Enrichment of Cherubims,” 152, 143.