Holborn and Bloomsbury | Page 5

Court, and its site is occupied by a manufactory. After two years Lord Dudley obtained from the King license to transfer all his newly-gained estates to Sir Wymonde Carew, but there seems reason to suppose that Lord Dudley remained in possession of the manor-house until his attainder in the reign of Queen Mary, because the manor then reverted to the Crown, and was regranted. Clinch gets out of this difficulty by supposing Lord Dudley to have parted with his estates and retained the manor, but in the deed of license for exchange all his "mansion place and capital house, late the house of the dissolved hospital of St. Giles in the Fields," is especially mentioned. It is possible that Sir Wymonde leased it again to the Dudley family.
Among the many subsequent holders of the manor we find the name of Sir Walter Cope, who bought the Manor of Kensington in 1612, and through whose only child, Isabel, it passed by marriage to Sir Henry Rich, created Earl of Holland. The Manor of St. Giles was in the possession of the Crown again in Charles II.'s reign, when Alice Leigh, created by him Duchess of Dudley, lived in the manor-house. This Duchess made many gifts to the church, among which was a rectory-house.
The Church of St. Giles at present standing is certainly the third, if not the fourth, which has been upon the same site. As mentioned above, there is reason to believe from Henry II.'s charter that a sacred building of some sort stood here before the leper chapel. The chapel had a chapter-house attached, and seems to have been a well-cared-for building. There were several chantry chapels and a high altar dedicated to St. Giles. St. Giles's in the earlier charters is spoken of as a village, not a parish, but there is little doubt that after the establishment of the hospital its chapel was used as a parish church by the villagers. There was probably a wall screening off the lepers. The first church of which any illustration is preserved has a curious tower, capped by a round dome. The view of this church, dated 1560, is taken after the dissolution of the hospital, when it had become entirely parochial. In 1617 the quaint old tower was taken down, and replaced by another, but only six years after the whole church was rebuilt. A view of this in 1718 gives a very long battlemented body in two stories, with a square tower surmounted by an open belfry and vane. It possessed remarkably fine stained-glass windows and a handsome screen presented by the Duchess of Dudley.
This second church did not last very long, for in Queen Anne's reign the parishioners petitioned that it should be rebuilt as one of the fifty new churches, being then in a state of decay. The present church, which is very solid, and has dignity of outline, was the work of Flitcroft, and was opened April 14, 1734. The steeple is 160 feet high, with a rustic pedestal, a Doric story, an octagonal tower, and spire. The basement is of rusticated Portland stone, of which the church is built, and quoins of the same material decorate the windows and angles within. It follows the lines of the period, with hardly any chancel, wide galleries on three sides standing on piers, from which columns rise to the elliptical ceiling. The part of the roof over the galleries is bayed at right angles to the curve of the central part. Monuments hang on the walls and columns, and occupy every available space. By far the most striking of these is the full-length figure of a woman in repose which is set on a broad window-seat. This is the monument of Lady Frances Kniveton, daughter of Alice Leigh, Duchess of Dudley. The daughter's tomb remains a memorial of her mother's benefactions to the parish. The monument of Andrew Marvell, a plain black marble slab, is on the north wall. Marvell was buried in the church "under the pews in the south side," but the present monument was not erected until 1764, eighty-six years after his death, owing to the opposition of the incumbent of the church. The inscription on it slightly varies from that intended for the original monument. Besides a handsome brass cross on the chancel floor to the Rector, Canon Nisbett, a tomb in form of a Roman altar, designed by Inigo Jones, and commemorating George Chapman, the translator of Homer, and a touching monument in the lobby to "John Belayse," put up by his two daughters, there is nothing further worth seeing.
The graveyard which surrounds the church is supposed to have been the ancient interment-ground of the hospital. The first mention of it in the parish books is in 1628, when three cottages were