St Giles-in-the-Fields Church was built in the
1730s on the site of an earlier church and also of two plague pits of the Black
Death. The church is surrounded by a small railed churchyard, with a lych gate
on St Giles High Street in the style of a Doric triumphal arch. Following
closure as a burial ground, St Giles' Churchyard was later laid out as a garden
and opened to the public in 1891, maintained by Holborn Borough Council. The
garden has a few tombs remaining; gravestones are ranged along the east boundary
wall adjacent to a paved area to the east of the church shaded by mature trees;
York stone paths run through grass, and behind the church is a formal area of
ornamental planting.
The Ornamental Passions website (visit
link) tells us:
"Not many inner London churches have room
for a lych gate, let alone one as grand as at St Giles. It was originally built
at the northern entrance, on St Giles High Street, and replaced a rather smaller
brick arch of 1687.
The original gate had a curious tympanum
with a vigorous depiction of the Resurrection, carved in oak by a man called
Love. He was paid £27 for it.
In 1800 the gateway was replaced with a
grander, Palladian structure in stone. It was designed by the architect, builder
and surveyor William Leverton, who was also, as recorded in an inscription on
the back, a churchwarden.
The Resurrection was clearly much admired,
as an exact copy was placed in the new arch and the original hung in the
vestibule of the church where it remains today. The gate itself was moved to its
present position in 1865.
The tympanum depicts Christ bursting onto
the world in a blaze of light, announced by angels with trumpets filling the
sky.
Beneath his feet, a nasty little imp with
bat's wings, tail and claws scuttles off to her master, Satan, who stands in the
mouth of Hell at the bottom right hand corner (which is on Christ's left, or
sinister, hand). Flames and smoke belch from the infernal regions, as sinners
are dragged down to eternal torment.
All along the bottom, graves spring open and
the dead arise, some as skeletons, others as rather gruesome shrouded corpses.
An angel holds a naked man with one hand, pointing heavenwards with the other.
Another man grasps him by the leg, hoping to get a lift to glory. Two women sing
and play the harp as they arise."