St George's, Bloomsbury

St. George's, Bloomsbury
Tower of St. George's, with a lion and unicorn and George I on the steeple
Country	United Kingdom
Denomination	Anglican
Churchmanship	Anglo-Catholic
Website	www.stgeorgesbloomsbury.org.uk
History
Founded	1730
Architecture
Heritage designation	Grade I
Architect(s)	Nicholas Hawksmoor
Style	Classical
Administration
Diocese	London
Clergy
Rector	Fr David Peebles
Honorary priest(s)	Fr Rene Jarrett and Fr James Walters

St George's, Bloomsbury, is a parish church in Bloomsbury, London Borough of Camden, United Kingdom.

The Commissioners for the Fifty New Churches Act of 1711 realised that, due to rapid development in the Bloomsbury area during the latter part of the 17th and early part of the 18th centuries, the area (then part of the parish of St Giles in the Fields) needed to be split off and given a parish church of its own. They appointed Nicholas Hawksmoor, a pupil and former assistant of Sir Christopher Wren, to design and build this church, which he then did between 1716 and 1731. This was the sixth and last, of his London churches. St George's was consecrated on 28 January 1730 by Edmund Gibson, Bishop of London.

The Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope was baptised here in 1824. Richard Meux Benson, founder of the first Anglican religious order for men, Society of St John the Evangelist, the "Cowley Fathers", was also baptised in the church. The funeral of Emily Davison, the suffragette who died when she was hit by the King's horse during the 1913 Derby, took place here that same year. Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia attended a controversial requiem for the dead of the Abyssinian war in 1937.

It was until 2006 the subject of major conservation work led by the World Monuments Fund and closed to visitors, with the congregation continuing as normal in its parish life, holding services in a nearby chapel. The building reopened fully from October 2006, including a new exhibition on the church, Hawksmoor and Bloomsbury housed in its undercroft.