Strangers' Church, Austin Friars

Dutch Church, Austin Friars Nederlandse Kerk Londen
The world's oldest Dutch reformed church
Location	7 Austin Friars, London
Country	United Kingdom
Denomination	None (Ecumenical)
Website	www.dutchchurch.org.uk
Architecture
Architect(s)	Sir Arthur Bailey
Style	Mid twentieth century architecture
Clergy
Minister(s)	Joost Röselaers

The Dutch Church, Austin Friars (Dutch: Nederlandse Kerk Londen), is a reformed church in the Broad Street Ward, in the City of London. Located on the site of the 13th-century Augustinian friary, the original building granted to Protestant refugees for their church services in 1550 was destroyed during the London Blitz.

The present church was built between 1950 and 1954 and is a familiar landmark in the Broad Street Ward. With the founding of the church dating to 1550, it is the oldest Dutch-language Protestant church in the world, and as such is known in The Netherlands as the mother church of all Dutch reformed churches.

The original church was a monastic priory known as the Austin Friars, London, a contraction of "Augustinian Friars", founded circa 1253 by Humphrey de Bohun, 2nd Earl of Hereford (d. 1275). The pretender Perkin Warbeck, executed on 23 November 1499 for claiming to be Richard of Shrewsbury, the younger of the Princes in the Tower, is buried in the church. The priory was dissolved in November 1538. The City of London attempted to buy the church of the friary from the Crown in 1539 and again in 1546 but was rebuffed. In 1550, London's community of "Germans and other strangers" was granted the use of the friary church's nave; the rest of the church was used as a storehouse, with the monuments sold for £100 and the lead stripped from the roof. The choir, tower and transepts were demolished in 1600.

The nave became the first official nonconformist chapel in England under its Polish-born superintendent John a Lasco (known in Poland as Jan Łaski) who had founded a preaching house for a group of Protestant refugees mainly from the Low Countries. The mostly Dutch and French speaking "strangers" were granted a royal charter on 24 July 1550 that allowed them to establish a Stranger Church and this was incorporated by letters patent from King Edward VI. Upon incorporation, the church was named the "Temple of the Lord Jesus" and had four pastors: two for Dutch and two for the French-Walloon who by the 1580s began using St Anthony's Chapel in Threadneedle Street.