Wren's rehearsal for St Paul's, with a Henry Moore altar at its heart. This watercolour captures the interior of St Stephen Walbrook, its coffered dome rising above a Greek-cross arrangement of eight semi-circular arches resting on twelve Corinthian columns.
Built between 1672 and 1679 by Sir Christopher Wren, the church's dome was the first classical dome completed in England and served as a direct prototype for the great dome of St Paul's Cathedral, which Wren would design three decades later. At the centre sits Henry Moore's travertine marble altar, carved in 1972 from the same Italian quarry near Rome that supplied stone for Michelangelo's work, and controversially placed in the middle of the church a decision that had to be approved by the Court of Ecclesiastical Cases Reserved after an appeal.
The church is also the birthplace of the Samaritans, founded here in 1953 by rector Chad Varah as a telephone ministry for the suicidal and despairing.
 
Interesting facts...
The interior is arranged as a Greek cross, with a 50-tonne dome supported on eight semi-circular arches resting on twelve Corinthian columns,  a geometrically perfect space described by Sir John Summerson as 'the pride of English Architecture.' .
 
 Sir John Vanbrugh, the dramatist and architect of Blenheim Palace and Castle Howard, is buried in the vault beneath the church floor, though no memorial marks his grave. So really two titans of architecture have been in this building.
 
The church is often cited as Wren's finest City church, with its interior regarded as one of the most perfectly proportioned spaces in English architecture.
 
Location: Walbrook, City of London, EC4N 8BN