St Matthew's, Bethnal Green

St Matthew's, Bethnal Green St Matthew's is a local church in the East End of London, a parish full of vastly different people. We trust in God, work and pray for justice and peace.
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We're part of groups such as: The Diocese of London, Inclusive Church & Christian Aid.

Join us this Sunday for a special interactive teaching Mass. This is your chance to learn all about what we do, the trad...
10/06/2026

Join us this Sunday for a special interactive teaching Mass. This is your chance to learn all about what we do, the tradition we follow, the style of liturgy and, most importantly, why we do it! And it will be followed by a picnic in the sunshine afterwards, just outside church in the forecourt. Hope you can come!

And here we have Mr Anthony Lewis, the architect who designed the rebuild of St Matthew’s following the destruction of i...
09/06/2026

And here we have Mr Anthony Lewis, the architect who designed the rebuild of St Matthew’s following the destruction of its interior on the first night of the Blitz, presenting his model to Princess Alexandra in 1960. We won’t give him too much credit for the part you see in the photograph, since the exterior was not severely damaged and, but for a new style of window, is almost identical to the original from 1746. For that, credit must go to George Dance the Elder.

However, not to rain on Lewis’s parade, his design of the new interior was nothing short of remarkable. With the chancel arc still in place, Lewis very creatively worked around it, designing a modern church, with stairs leading to a new upper chapel, beneath it. Unrecognisable from the original, but holding a distinct reverence of its own, the new inside gets credit to this day for its surprising brightness, openness and art deco beauty.

The monstrance came out for our beautiful Mass today celebrating Corpus Christi and remembering the very presence of Chr...
07/06/2026

The monstrance came out for our beautiful Mass today celebrating Corpus Christi and remembering the very presence of Christ Jesus in the Holy Eucharist. Next week is your chance to join us to learn about the Mass and why we do what we do.

Ever wondered why St Matthew’s has a 1960s art deco interior within its Georgian brickwork? On 7th September, 1940, the ...
04/06/2026

Ever wondered why St Matthew’s has a 1960s art deco interior within its Georgian brickwork? On 7th September, 1940, the very first night of the German Blitz on London in World War II, St Matthew’s, the mother church of Bethnal Geeen, was bombed. The bomb was dropped straight through the middle of the roof and gutted the church from the inside, destroying the original interior (seen in the fifth photograph) forever. The tower, though destabilised and thus making the Victorian cupola unsalvageable, was otherwise unaffected and is the only part of church’s interior that remains in its pre-war condition.

But, as we know, Hi**er had to do a lot more than this to stop the resilient people of the 1940s east end. The show must go on, and so it did. Almost immediately after the hit, St Matthew’s resumed services, with a full Mass and servers’ procession, within the bombed out shell of the church, as you can see from the first three photographs. These open-air services went on for almost a decade, and attendance at church even increased during this time, before at last a temporary church (photo 4) was erected within the bombed out ruins in 1952.

It was to be just short of another decade before the church, unlike many of its daughter churches which now faced closure after sustaining damage of their own, was fully reconsecrated in 1961. The sixth photograph shows the then rector of Bethnal Green, Charles Geoffrey How, inside the church as it is being redesigned in the style we see today.

The parish’s response to the war was a story of remarkable community resilience at a time when just about everything was under threat. However, it was neither the first, nor the last, time St Matthew’s would have to stand strong and stubborn in the face of adversity. But more about that another time.

St Matthew’s (PCC pictured above) would like to thank , Fr Peter McGeary, the Brick Lane , the East London Evensong Ch...
03/06/2026

St Matthew’s (PCC pictured above) would like to thank , Fr Peter McGeary, the Brick Lane , the East London Evensong Choir and all who attended for a joyful evening of music, spirituality and conversation. And even the tree blowing down in the churchyard couldn’t spoil it! We hope to see many more nights like this in the weeks, months and years ahead.

“Oh I used to collect the parish magazine”, so said a parishioner as she was passing by the other day. “They’re a few ye...
01/06/2026

“Oh I used to collect the parish magazine”, so said a parishioner as she was passing by the other day. “They’re a few years old some of them, shall I bring them in?” And, lo and behold, she turns up with a pile of them going back all the way to 1964, much to the excitement of our churchwardens. So much inspiration to be gained from the past. They’ll be sifting through these for a while so expect more posts but, for now, enjoy a former rector’s sketch of the church, a hand drawn replication of an original map of the parish, an article about the times John Wesley preached here, the scores of the very successful church football team, and a few excerpts which do and don’t reflect the situation the today in equal measure! Enjoy! And thank you Lyn!

An idyllic cottage in the English countryside…not quite! This is the St Matthew’s Bethnal Green Watch House. Although, t...
29/05/2026

An idyllic cottage in the English countryside…not quite! This is the St Matthew’s Bethnal Green Watch House. Although, the opening description perhaps isn’t as far off as you might think…

Bethnal Green was indeed countryside, not too long before St Matthew’s was originally consecrated. The City of London was (and technically still is) just one square mile, its boundary being at Norton Folgate/Bishopsgate, which is just before you come to Liverpool Street Station. The word ‘gate’ within the suffix tells you that this was where the gate to the city once lay. Beyond that gate was the marshy green of Bethnal. Or Blithenhæl as it was once known (meaning ‘happy nook’).

However, as the city of London grew, its population soaring from 50,000 to 200,000 between 1400 and 1600, more and more people began to find homes on the areas immediately surrounding it. As the land around Bethnal Green was so boggy, the majority locating here were on the more impoverished side. The majority of this growing population based itself in an enclave around Hare Street (today Cheshire Street) and Hare Marsh (still Hare Marsh), just over the road from the church and Watch House.

Work on the church was started in 1743 and the Watch House followed just two decades later in 1754 because of the growing profligacy of grave robbing in the area. As St Matthew’s did burials in its churchyard (around 20,000 bodies remain buried here), and the population resorted to any means necessary to make money, the rising science of anatomy created a ready made market for grave robbers to tap into. So something had to be done. The churchwarden was in charge and possessed a rattle and blunderbuss to respectively warn and shoot those caught robbing the graves. The house contained a cell for the warden to keep those whom they apprehended.

The blunderbuss and rattle are still around and the churchwardens retain the legal right to make use of them should they encounter such criminality - at least the law has never been repealed! The cell is also still present inside the house which is listed and still belongs to the parish of St Matthew.

Please join us to welcome a very special guest on Wednesday 3rd June as the new Bishop of Stepney, the Rt Rev’d Rod Gree...
29/05/2026

Please join us to welcome a very special guest on Wednesday 3rd June as the new Bishop of Stepney, the Rt Rev’d Rod Green, joins us in Bethnal Green for choral evensong at 7:30pm. Bishop Rod will preach the homily at a service officiated by Rev’d Peter McGeary, with musical accompaniment from the East London Evensong Choir. Evensong will be followed by a reception of food, provided by the and both alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks. We’d love to see you at St Matthew’s for this special evening of traditional contemplative worship based on the Book of Common Prayer.

The full name of this church is much longer than you might think. Originally, it was just St Matthew’s Church. But in so...
27/05/2026

The full name of this church is much longer than you might think. Originally, it was just St Matthew’s Church. But in some places it is now referred to as the Ecclesiastical Parish of St Matthew with James the Great and St Jude Bethnal Green. And, having also incorporated St Philip’s Swanfield Street, St Matthias Bacon Street, St Paul’s, Virginia Road and St Andrew’s Viaduct Street, the name could indeed be much longer.

St Matthew’s is the Mother Church of Bethnal Green. It was carved out of St Dunstan’s Stepney, the original church of the East End which existed as early as the 10th Century, in 1743, making St Dunstan’s our own mother church.

All of the now closed churches named above, among others that still exist, were carved out of St Matthew’s when 12 new churches were planted in the district of Bethnal Green (sometimes known as the Twelve Apostles of Bethnal Green) under the plans of Bishop Blomfield, Bishop of London between 1828 and 1856. The scheme was designed to make up for the “spiritual destitution” that the Church felt was present in Bethnal Green, the belief being that more physical churches, with schools attached, would encourage a surge in attendance and thus a moral and spiritual improvement within the population.

Unfortunately, this didn’t really happen. The parishioners were somewhat miffed at the “imposition” of this “grand plan for above” (Wendy Toole, 2016) and, rather than more people attending church, it resulted in thinly spread congregations across Bethnal Green. Bishop Blomfield himself conceded the failure when he labelled Bethnal Green “the spot where it is said we have sown our seed in vain”.

Eventually, mostly after sustaining bomb damage in World War II, these churches were abandoned, deemed unviable to remain, and amalgamated back into their mother church of St Matthew.

Today, only four additional Bethnal Green churches remain, with just two of them having come out of Blomfield’s scheme: St Peter‘s and St James-the-Less. The remaining two are St John (consecrated as a chapel of ease) and St Barnabas (consecrated to serve the East of the old parish).

The Holy Spirit has descended! And we celebrated with a lovely service led by the Rev’d Canon Philip Banks followed by a...
24/05/2026

The Holy Spirit has descended! And we celebrated with a lovely service led by the Rev’d Canon Philip Banks followed by a joyous picnic in the red hot sunshine of the forecourt. We also welcomed eleven-year-old Esah as our newest member of the serving team. And we loved the sermon and its recollection of the time theologian John Wesley graced the pulpit of St Matthew’s, back in 1775.

Address

St Matthew's Row, Bethnal Green
London
E26DT

Opening Hours

Monday 9am - 5pm
Wednesday 9am - 5pm
Thursday 9am - 5pm
Friday 9am - 5pm
Saturday 9am - 5pm
Sunday 9am - 5pm

Telephone

+442077397586

Website

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