In 1751, William Hogarth, the great London painter and satirist, produced Gin Lane, one of his famous etchings. This raucous image is a good place to introduce the story of the city’s most eccentric church, because in the background is the unique spire of St George’s in Bloomsbury.
In the late 1600s, London was expanding. To the north of the city, new mansions were being constructed and squares lain out on open land by people such as the Earl of Southampton. Others followed suit and soon a genteel neighbourhood was established. But, there was a problem! The nearest church for the smart folk of Bloomsbury to worship in was St Giles in the Fields, which meant passing through the infamous Rookery, a dangerous overcrowded slum filled with the drunkenness, criminality and debauchery so vividly depicted in Hogarth’s Gin Lane. Petitions were made and, thanks to the Fifty New Churches Act of 1711, a small plot of land off what is now Bloomsbury Way was purchased to build a new church for the princely sum of £1000.
