St Vedast-alias-Foster, a small City church with a strange name and a fascinating history
- London On The Ground
- Feb 28
- 8 min read
The Wren church near St Paul’s has many interesting features and a hidden courtyard of surprises.
First, let me explain the unusual name of this church. Vedast was a sixth century bishop of Arras, in the border region between France and Flanders. Known as Vaast in Flemish, his greatest claim to fame is probably his conversion to Christianity of the Frankish king, Clovis.
St Vedast was venerated by Flemish merchants who came to England in the 12th century, when his name was corrupted and anglicised to Foster. This explains the peculiar name of the church, St Vedast-alias-Foster, which stands on Foster Lane, off Cheapside in the City of London, very close to St Paul’s Cathedral.
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The church is first mentioned in historical records in the 13th century and was probably founded by the Flemish community. It was rebuilt in the 16th century, beautified in the 17th and then badly damaged, but not totally destroyed, in the Great Fire of London in 1666.
Initially the church was repaired by its parishioners in 1669-72, but 20 odd years later Robert Hooke decided that it needed redoing. Hooke, a scientist, surveyor and all round genius, was a close colleague of Christopher Wren, who was responsible for rebuilding 51 churches and St Paul’s after the Great Fire.
St Vedast was then rebuilt, using much of its original wall structure, on an irregular ground plan in 1695-1701. The Portland stone steeple was added a decade later.
All the leading characters of Wren’s office played a part in the rebuilding of St Vedast: Wren himself, Robert Hooke (as already noted), Nicholas Hawksmoor (who worked for Wren before becoming an established architect in his own right) and the Strong family of stone masons.
The steeple, which consists of three stages of diminishing size - the first concave, the second convex and the third an obelisk spire - is thought possibly to have been designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor. The tower was built by Edward Strong the Younger, a master mason whose family (including his father, Edward Strong the Elder) worked with Wren on St Paul’s and other City churches.
An incendiary bomb attack on the City of London during the Blitz, on the night of 29 December 1940, gutted St Vedast, leaving it a shell.
In 1941 the poet and lover of old buildings, John Betjeman, described the ruined church as follows:
“There was something grimly ironic about St Vedast’s, Foster Lane… the doors were, as usual, locked and the gate in front of them padlocked. But there was no church behind the doors, just an arcade and a heap of rubble to the sky and a smashed font and a brown smoke-streak across the stone steeple.”
Architect Stephen Dykes-Bower rebuilt the church under the supervision of its rector, Canon Charles Bernard Mortlock and a church council that included John Betjeman, in 1953-63.
The post-war restoration took a long time. A painting inside the church shows that St Vedast remained a shell in 1955 (the artist's name on the bottom left indicates a first name of David, but I cannot read the surname - please let me know if you can read it, or if you know the name).
Although the bombs had destroyed the original 17th century interior fittings, the post-war restoration made use of Wren-period furnishings taken from other City churches.
The nearby Wren church of St Anne and St Agnes is the only one of these that is still standing. Nevertheless, St Vedast is now home to its sword rest, font and font cover (said to have been carved by Grinling Gibbons, Wren's master carver).
All Hallows Bread Street, a Wren church demolished in 1876, was the original home of the elaborately carved pulpit in St Vedast.
The reredos (wooden panel with scriptures) came from St Christopher-le-Stocks, another Wren church that was demolished to make way for the enlargement of the Bank of England in 1781.
The 18th century organ case was taken from St Bartholomew by the Exchange, another Wren church, which was demolished in 1840. Noel Mander, a renowned 20th century organ builder, who also sat on the church council after the war, restored the organ and brought it to St Vedast in the 1950s. It was originally built by Renatus Harris in 1731.
The Royal coat of arms, in the north east corner of the church, was originally in St Matthew Friday Street, yet another Wren church, demolished in 1886.
The pews, floor, ceiling and stained glass windows are all post-war.
The pews face each other, college chapel style, but with a very slight taper to create the impression of additional length in the nave. The architect also put new false walls inside the east and south walls to square up the irregular angles of the original floor plan.
The stucco ornamentation in the ceiling is decorated with gold leaf and aluminium paint (the latter to look like silver). Funded by the Goldsmiths’ Company, whose Livery Hall is a very short walk north along Foster Lane, the ceiling is similar to the Wren original.
The stained glass windows in the east wall, above the altar, show scenes from the life of Vedast. They were made by Brian Thomas, a leading stained glass artist and painter (he also created the windows in the American Chapel at the east end of St Paul’s Cathedral, among many others).
The church contains an almost hidden south aisle, to the right as you enter the church, with an additional chapel containing a monument to Canon Mortlock, a 17th century communion table, an aumbry (a small recess above the altar) made by Bernard Merry in 1992 and a sculpture of the Dove in Glory carved by Edward Strong for the post-Great Fire church.
A blue door next to St Vedast on Foster Lane leads to the church’s rather wonderful hidden courtyard, with an an acer tree at its centre. It provides a quiet place to sit and take a break, offering cool shade in the summer and shelter from the wind and the rain in winter.
It also houses some unusual and unexpected artefacts.
In the north west corner of the courtyard is a sculpture created by Jacob Epstein in 1936. Simply entitled ‘Head’, it is a portrait of Canon Mortlock, rector at St Vedast from 1953 until his death at the age of 79 in 1967. Mortlock knew the celebrated sculptor well enough to give the eulogy at Epstein’s funeral in 1959.
Mortlock was a connoisseur of art, architecture and antiques and a former archaeological correspondent for The Daily Telegraph. His interests are reflected in other objects in St Vedast’s courtyard.
Diagonally opposite the sculpted portrait of the Canon, there is a baked clay tablet that is one of the oldest objects on public outdoor display anywhere in London.
Dating from the 9th century BC, it is inscribed in cuneiform, the script used in the Assyrian Empire. It was presented to St Vedast by Sir Max Mallowan, an archaeologist and friend of Canon Mortlock, who found it on a dig at the Zigurrat of Kalhu, in what is now Iraq, in the 1950s. The text refers to Shalmaneser III, who ruled in 858-834 BC. Sir Max regularly attended services at the church with his wife, the highly successful crime writer, Agatha Christie.
On the same wall as the Assyrian tablet, the south wall, is a section of Roman tessellated pavement. It was originally found under St Matthew Friday Street.
Also on the south wall of the courtyard, there is a memorial to a man known as ‘Petro’. Major Wladimir Vassilievitch Petropavlovsky, described on the plaque as a ‘soldier of the Tsar, of France, of England’ is hardly known, but his story is remarkable.
Born in Russia in 1897 (according to most online sources, although the plaque says 1888), Petro was an artillery officer in World War I, until Russia withdrew from that conflict upon the revolution of 1917. He then fought in the Russian civil war with the anti-communist White Russians, before moving to France and serving as an officer with the French Foreign Legion in Morocco.
At the start of World War II, he was in Asia in Hong Kong, where he joined a unit of the British Indian Army. He was soon seconded to the Special Operations Executive, which specialised in espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance behind enemy lines in German-occupied Europe (his knowledge of Russian, French, Arabic, Chinese, some Yugolsavian languages and English was an asset). He died in 1871 after a life filled with adventure. As the monument says, ‘This was a Man”.
On the east side of the courtyard is the red brick church hall, originally built in the 1690s as a school room for St Leonard Foster Lane, which was destroyed in the Great Fire and never rebuilt.
A rectory was built on the west side of the courtyard after World War II, to provide accommodation for the rector (and, presumably, the rector’s family).
The church tower is usually closed to the public, but I visited it during an open day in May 2025, hosted by the bell ringers. The bells are rung from a small chamber in the tower, reached via a narrow spiral staircase through a door off the south aisle of the church.
The City of London is an important centre for the very specialist art of bell ringing and St Vedast is one of several churches where campanologists can practice their skills (see also my post on the bells of St Mary-le-Bow for more on this topic) .
The whitewashed walls of the bell ringing chamber display some unusual 18th century graffiti. There are names, initials and dates, some enclosed in box shapes and others in simple house-shaped motifs. The latter are thought to represent memorials, especially if they have a flag or a cross on the roof.
There are also examples of a flower-like device, drawn from the arcs of a circle and surrounded by a circle, which is a medieval symbol thought to ward off evil.
Click on any image to enlarge
Above: 18th century graffiti on the walls in the bell ringing chamber
On our visit, we were offered a bell-shaped biscuit, which warded off hunger and raised a smile.
Further up the tower, St Vedast’s bells hang from wooden frames in a section of the tower with louvres in the walls (slotted openings that can be opened or closed to control how loudly the bells ring out across the surrounding area).
The six bells were recast by the firm of Mears and Stainbank at the Whitechapel Bell Foundry in 1960, from older bells that were damaged in the Blitz.
On the open day, we saw a bell ringing out from close quarters. Fortunately its clapper was muffled, otherwise the sound would have been dangerously loud!
From its unusual name to its Wren-period fittings, from its hidden courtyard and bizarre collection of artefacts to its distinctive steeple and graffiti-scrawled bell chamber, St Vedast-alias-Foster is yet another example of the fascinating and historic delights to be found all over the City of London.
According to the church's website, St Vedast is normally open to visit 8am-4pm Monday-Friday and holds a Sunday service at 11am. The courtyard is usually open at the same time as the church. I have known it to be open on a Saturday, but would recommend contacting the church in advance before making a special trip to visit it.
Click on any image to enlarge
Walks available for booking
For a schedule of forthcoming London On The Ground guided walks and tours, please click here.
Hi Jonathan
Love reading your emails and discovering more about the history of London. However, your reference to Agatha Christie, did you mean to describe her as a children’s writer or a crime writer?