The Temple Church

     After leaving the Garden Museum I retraced my steps, walking back along the river downstream to Westminster Bridge and the Tube, and took a train to Temple. 
     Out of the tube I passed Two Temple Place, a house designed by John Loughborough Pearson for the Astors.  Tudoresque, in Portland stone. Not the sort of thing one associates with Pearson but he acquits himself well enough.

      From there up some dark and steep steps into Essex St. Turning left into Devereux Court I found myself, finally, in Middle Temple.  The Temple is really a remarkable part of London - an interlocking series of lanes and courts, intimate and intricate, untrammelled by the worst aspects of 20th century architecture and planning.  It is a 'liberty', a sort of self-governing enclave within the City of London, a place of solicitors and lawyers.  My goal was the Temple Church, situated within the Inner Temple, and by shear luck it was open.

     This was the second Anglican Establishment church of the day - it being a Royal Peculiar (i.e. being outside of normal episcopal jurisdiction).  It was also the second round nave of the trip away.  Like the Round Church in Cambridge, Temple Church it is connected to the religious orders founded during the Crusades.  In this case the Templars and the Hospitallers, who, after the suppression of the Templar order in 1312, were granted the site.
     Temple Church consists of two parts: the circular nave (Transitional Gothic, consecrated 1185) and the Choir which is Early English, vast and serene.  Deliciously cool too, on such a hot day.  It has been speculated (by Diarmaid Mcculloch among others) that the nave which is based not (only) on the Anastasis rotunda, but the second Late Antique centralized structure in Jerusalem: the Dome of the Rock, which was by the 12th century erroneously believed to be the Temple (the 2nd Temple) in which Christ was presented in the flesh. I'm not sure what the consensus is on the origins of the Temple nave.  The website of the Temple Church, does not mention any link. The Temple rotunda however does have a three story internal elevation like the Anastasis, but of a form such as you might find in a grander Norman cathedral or abbey church. (As has the Round Church in Cambridge.) Importantly, the nave contains a number of Templar effigies, and on the exterior sports a very fine Romanesque w door.

     The choir is that rare, almost unique, thing in the British Isles - a 'hall church', that is the vaulted nave and aisles are the same height.  It was consecrated on Ascension Day 1240.  The church was restored by Blore in the 19th century and suffered heavily in the Blitz.  The effigies in the nave were seriously damaged, as were the Purbeck marble piers in the choir.  After the War the piers were replaced without taking down the original Medieval vaults.  Quite the undertaking.  The opportunity was also taken to restore Wren's altarpiece to the church (it had been removed in the 19th century).  A fine thing it is too.  Blore's extensive Gothic Revival decorative scheme was not re-instated, the architect Walter Godfrey designing new furnishings in a Neo-Georgian style.  I think the result is just right.  It's all rather lucid and beautiful.