St Stephen Coleman Street

St. Stephen Coleman Street
Location	Coleman Street and Gresham Street, London
Country	United Kingdom
Denomination	Church of England
Architecture
Architect(s)	Christopher Wren
Style	Baroque
Demolished	1940

St. Stephen's Church, Coleman Street was a church in the City of London, at the corner of Coleman Street and what is now Gresham Street, first mentioned in the 13th century. Destroyed in the Great Fire of London of 1666, it was rebuilt by the office of Sir Christopher Wren. The church was destroyed again, by bombing in 1940, and was never rebuilt.

St. Stephen's was one of two City churches dedicated to the Christian protomartyr St. Stephen who, by tradition, suffered lapidation in Jerusalem in about 35 AD. Coleman Street itself is named after the charcoal burners who used to live there. During the reign of Henry III, the church is recorded as St. Stephen in the Jewry owing to its situation in the quarter of London inhabited by many Jews. John Stow asserted, incorrectly, that the building had been used as a synagogue.

The earliest surviving reference to the church is to “the parish of St. Stephen colemanstrate” during the reign of King John. Two centuries later, the church is recorded as a chapel of ease to St. Olave Old Jewry. It regained parochial status in the middle of the 15th century.

In 1431, John Sokelyng, who owned a neighbouring brewery called ‘La Cokke on the hoop’, died and left a bequest to St. Stephen’s on the condition that Mass be sung on the anniversary of his death and that of his two wives. The gift was commemorated by a cock in a hoop motif that would decorate the church until 1940 and can still be seen in parish boundary markers.

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