St Giles in the Fields

St Giles-in-the-Fields
Church of St Giles-in-the-Fields, London
Country	United Kingdom
Denomination	Anglican
Website	www.stgilesonline.org
Architecture
Heritage designation	Grade I
Architect(s)	Henry Flitcroft
Style	Palladian
Administration
Diocese	London
Clergy
Rector	Reverend Alan Carr

Coordinates: 51°30′55.12″N 00°07′43.08″W / 51.5153111°N 0.1286333°W / 51.5153111; -0.1286333

St Giles-in-the-Fields, also commonly known as the Poets' Church, is a church in the London Borough of Camden, in the West End. It is close to the Centre Point office tower and the Tottenham Court Road tube station. The church is part of the Diocese of London within the Church of England. Several buildings have stood on the site; the present structure (in the Palladian style) was built between 1731 and 1733.

The first recorded church on this site was a chapel of the parish of Holborn attached to a monastery and leper hospital founded by Matilda of Scotland, the wife of Henry I, in 1101. At that time, it stood well outside the boundaries of the city of London, though on the main road to Tyburn and Oxford. This chapel probably came to function as the church of the small village that grew up to provide services to the hospital.

The hospital was supported by the Crown and administered by the City for its first two hundred years; in fact, it was named a royal free chapel. Beginning in 1299, on the order of Edward I, it was administered by the Order of Saint Lazarus (in full, the Military and Hospitaller Order of Saint Lazarus), one of the chivalric orders to survive the era of the Crusades. The fourteenth century was a turbulent one for the hospital, with frequent accusations from the City authorities that the members of the Order of Saint Lazarus, known as Lazar brothers, put the affairs of the monastery ahead of caring for the lepers. During the fourteenth century, the king, on several occasions, interfered by appointing a new head of the hospital.