case study 37 Saint John the Evangelist Horsleydown, Bermondsey,

1732 Parish church, demolished Architects: Nicholas Hawksmoor (1661–1736) and John James (1673–1746) See Queen’s College Chapel, Oxford (CS28) for more information on Nicholas Hawksmoor and (CS33) for John James.

Historical note

The parish of St John the Evangelist was formed out of the parish of St Olave Southwark. Like many other London suburban parishes, the population of Southwark had increased and that necessitated the creation of a new par- ish church. The project was adopted by the commission for building fifty new churches. A site on Horsleydown was acquired for a church and graveyard. The commissioners’ architects Nicholas Hawskmoor and John James were appointed. Their design was a plain classical building in Portland stone. The imposing west facade was pierced with three roundheaded windows and sur- mounted by a pediment. The square west tower is surmounted by a small bal- ustraded temple. The tower is further distinguished by its tall spire in form of an obelisk and the comet weather vane. The church consisted of a nave with apse. The aisles were formed by the columns supporting the galleries.1 The parish was officially created by Parliament in 1732 and the church was conse- crated in 1733 by William Richardson.

1 “The borough of Southwark: Churches,” in A History of the County of , ed. H.E. Malden (London: Victoria County History, 1912), vol. 4, 151–61, accessed March 13, 2016, http://www .british-history.ac.uk/vch/surrey/vol4/pp151-161. London Metropolitan Archives, HOR01, Horsleydown, St-John The Evangelist, www.cityoflondon.gov.uk.lma, accessed 06/10/2008.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004398979_047 420 case study 37

Sermon

Sermon title: Relative holiness. A sermon preach’d at the consecration of the parish-church of St. John in Southwark, June 15, 1733. By William Richardson, M.A.

Imprint: London: printed for W. Hinchliffe, under the Royal Exchange in Cornhill, 1733.

Author: William Richardson (1698–1775)

Lecturer at St Olave Southwark. Richardson is characterized as an antiquarian and a Tory. He graduated from Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and became a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1735. His most famous work is his edition of Francis Godwin’s De Praesulibus Angliae Commentaries, a catalogue of the episcopal succession in .2

Status: Sermon preached at the consecration of the newly built parish church, June 15, 1733.

Verse: Exodus 3: 5. Put off thy Shoes from off thy Feet, for the Place whereon thous standest is Holy Ground.

Purpose of the sermon as stated by the author (p. 3): “The dispute seems to be, not whether Places shall be appointed for the Service of God, but whether such places shall be particularly appropriated to that Use; not barely wheth- er Churches shall be built and set apart, but what Reverence is due to them when they are thus set apart; whether there is any particular Holiness in, or any special Regard to be had to such Places, exclusively of that reverential Deportment, which Christians are requir’d to use in the very Act of Prayer, or hearing the Word of God explain’d therein? To settle this, I think, important Point; important, not indeed to the Essence of Religion, but to that Decency and Reverential Awe, which we ought to have for every Thing that peculiarly belongs to God; to settle this shall be my present Undertaking; and accordingly I have pitch’d upon these Words of God himself to Moses…. [Exodus III.5.], Put off thy Shoes from off thy Feet, for the Place whereon thous standest is Holy Ground.”

2 Christopher Brooke, “Richardson, William (1698–1775), antiquary and college head,” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Online (2004), doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/28888.