St Mary le Strand, Westminster

The church is the second to have been called St Mary le Strand, the first having been situated a short distance to the south. It was mentioned in a judgment of 1222, when it was called the Church of the Innocents, or St Mary and the Innocents. It was pulled down in 1549 by Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, to make way for Somerset House. The parishioners were promised a new church, which was never built, forcing them to move to the nearby church of St Clement Danes and afterwards to the Savoy Chapel. The site occupied by the modern church was formerly occupied by a great maypole, which had been the scene of May Day festivities in the 16th and 17th century and was severely decayed by the…

The architecture of St Mary le Strand proved controversial from the outset, and the architect later expressed unhappiness at the way that his plans had been altered by the Commissioners. According to Gibbs, the church was originally intended to be an Italianate structure with a small campanile over the west end and no steeple. Instead of the latter, a column 250 feet (76 m) high surmounted with a statue of Queen Anne was to have been erected a short distance to the west of the church. A great quantity of stone was purchased and brought to the spot, but the plan was abandoned on the death of the queen in 1714. Instead, the architect was ordered to reuse the stone to build a steeple, which…