WREN’s largest surviving City of London parish church, St Andrew’s, Holborn, has been refurbished and reordered with a new baptistery, Lady chapel, and tabernacle.

In his sermon at the celebration of the work, and blessing of the new furnishings, the Bishop of Fulham, the Rt Revd Jonathan Baker, said that, after the church was Blitzed on the night of 7 May 1941, it had been predicted that it would never be rebuilt.

But it was; and it reopened in 1961 as a Guild Church, though a few corners were cut; and so now a new stone floor by Chichester Stoneworks has replaced the chequerboard of lino floor tiles, and a baptistery, connected to a spring beneath the church, has replaced a small chapel at the north-west corner whose post-war Baroque veneer was cracking and peeling. The church has a new colour scheme and lighting system.

Services were held in a marquee in the churchyard and in the crypt for many months while the work was carried out. At the celebration on 1 May, a member of the congregation, the architect DaeWha Kang, formally handed the building back for public worship.