St Dunstan-in-the-West

St Dunstan-in-the-West
St Dunstan-in-the-West in 1842
Location	Farringdon Without, City of London
Country	United Kingdom
Denomination	Church of England Romanian Orthodox
Website	www.stdunstaninthewest.org
Architecture
Heritage designation	Grade I listed building
Architect(s)	John Shaw Sr.
Style	Neo-Gothic
Administration
Diocese	London
Province	Canterbury
Clergy
Bishop(s)	Richard Chartres
Vicar(s)	Jonathan Baker
Priest(s)	Silviu Petre Pufulete (Romanian Orthodox)
Archdeacon	David Meara

The Guild Church of St Dunstan-in-the-West is in Fleet Street in the City of London. It is dedicated to a former Bishop of London and Archbishop of Canterbury. The church is of medieval origin, although the present building, with an octagonal nave, was constructed in the 1830s to the designs of John Shaw.

First founded between AD 988 and 1070, there is a possibility that a church on this site was one of the Lundenwic strand settlement churches, like St Martin in the Fields, the first St Mary le Strand, St Clement Danes and St Brides, which may pre-date any within the walls of the city. It is not known exactly when the original church was built, but it was possibly erected by Saint Dunstan himself, or priests who knew him well. It was first mentioned in written records in 1185.King Henry III gained possession of it and its endowments from Westminster Abbey by 1237 and then granted these and the advowson to the "House of Converts" i.e. of the converted Jews, which led to its neglect of its parochial responsibilities. The House of Converts was eventually transformed into the Court of the Master of the Rolls.

William Tyndale, the celebrated translator of the Bible, was a lecturer at the church and sermons were given by the poet John Donne. Samuel Pepys mentions the church in his diary. The church narrowly escaped the Great Fire of London in 1666. The Dean of Westminster roused 40 scholars from Westminster School in the middle of the night, who formed a fire brigade which extinguished the flames with buckets of water to only three doors away.