St Michael Cornhill is one of the oldest and most architecturally significant churches in the City of London, combining Roman foundations, medieval tradition, Wren-era reconstruction, and Victorian embellishment. It stands in the heart of Cornhill Ward near the Royal Exchange and marks nearly two millennia of continuous Christian worship.
The site of St Michael Cornhill lies directly above the remains of the Roman Basilica, part of London’s first-century civic centre. Documentary evidence records a church here by 1055, when “Alnod the priest” gifted it to the Abbey of Evesham. Patronage passed to the Drapers’ Company in 1503, which remains the patron to this day. John Stow, the Tudor chronicler, described the medieval church as “fair and beautiful,” and it even served as the storage place for Cornhill Ward’s armoury in its tower.
The medieval church was destroyed in the Great Fire of London (1666). The present structure was built by Sir Christopher Wren around 1670, with the tower’s upper stages designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor in a striking Gothic style between 1718–1722. Inside, Wren’s Tuscan columns and restrained plan contrast the later Victorian ornamentation.
Between 1857–1860, Sir George Gilbert Scott and the parish surveyor Herbert Williams reworked the entire interior in the High Victorian Gothic style, adding traceried windows, a north-west porch with a sculpted tympanum, and rich reredos panels. Surviving 17th-century details include paintings of Moses and Aaron and a wooden “Pelican in her Piety” sculpture from 1775. The 1672 baptismal font remains in use.
 
interesting facts...
A longstanding local legend speaks of “the Devil’s visit” during a storm, when bellringers saw a demonic shape leave claw marks in the masonry—marks still pointed out within the church today.