History
The first church on the site was built in medieval times, being recorded in 1147. It was rebuilt in the fourteenth century and again in 1532, when the present church building was constructed. It is in the Perpendicular style with its entrance located at the base of its off-centre tower. The interior is divided into six bays, with a many of the original fittings that have fortunately survived Victorian renovation. Formerly, the church had one of London's few surviving large stained-glass windows, installed in the 17th century, but this was destroyed in an IRA bomb-attack in 1992.
The church's curious name derives from the shaft of the maypole that was traditionally set up each year opposite the church. The custom continued each spring until 1517, when student riots put an end to it, but the maypole itself survived until 1547 when a Puritan mob seized it and destroyed it as a "pagan idol".
The church is currently administered from St Helen's Bishopsgate in Lime Street ward. The church was designated a Grade I listed building on January 4, 1950.
Read more about this topic: St Andrew Undershaft
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Like their personal lives, women’s history is fragmented, interrupted; a shadow history of human beings whose existence has been shaped by the efforts and the demands of others.”
—Elizabeth Janeway (b. 1913)
“We aspire to be something more than stupid and timid chattels, pretending to read history and our Bibles, but desecrating every house and every day we breathe in.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“You that would judge me do not judge alone
This book or that, come to this hallowed place
Where my friends’ portraits hang and look thereon;
Ireland’s history in their lineaments trace;
Think where man’s glory most begins and ends
And say my glory was I had such friends.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)