St Dunstan-in-the-East

Where it sits. St Dunstan-in-the-East stands on St Dunstan's Hill in the City of London, roughly halfway between London Bridge and the Tower of London and a hundred metres back from the river, tucked into a slope so steep that the churchyard sits well below the level of Great Tower Street above it. What remains is a shell — outer walls, window tracery and a tower — filled with a public garden maintained by the City of London Corporation. It is one of the very few places in the Square Mile where the noise falls away completely, and it takes most people by surprise, because nothing on the surrounding streets suggests it is there. Monument and Tower Hill are each about five minutes' walk.

The story behind it. A church stood here from about 1100. A south aisle was added in 1391 and repairs costing more than £2,400 were carried out in 1631. The Great Fire of 1666 gutted it, but rather than rebuild from scratch the parish patched the damaged fabric between 1668 and 1671. Between 1695 and 1701 a steeple was added to designs by Sir Christopher Wren — a needle spire carried on four flying buttresses, in the manner of St Nicholas in Newcastle, and executed in a Gothic idiom sympathetic to the surviving medieval body, though with heavy string courses of a kind the Middle Ages never used. The restored church held wood carvings by Grinling Gibbons and an organ by Father Smith, which was moved to St Albans Abbey in 1818. By 1817 the weight of the nave roof had pushed the walls seven inches out of true. The intention was to rebuild from the arches upward; the fabric proved so poor that everything except Wren's tower came down. David Laing, then architect to the Board of Customs, designed the replacement in the Perpendicular style with help from William Tite. The foundation stone was laid in November 1817 and the church reopened in January 1821: Portland stone, 115 feet by 65 feet, with a plaster lierne vault over the nave, seating between six and seven hundred people, at a cost of £36,000.

The Blitz and after. German bombing in 1941 destroyed the church for the second time in three centuries. Wren's tower and steeple survived the blast; of the rest only the north and south walls were left standing. In the post-war reorganisation of Anglican parishes in the City, it was decided not to rebuild. The ruin was designated a Grade I listed building on 4 January 1950, and in 1967 the City of London Corporation resolved to turn it into a public garden, which opened in 1971. Lawn and trees were planted inside the roofless nave and a low fountain set in the middle of it. The tower now houses the All Hallows House Foundation. The parish is combined with the benefice of All Hallows by the Tower, and open-air services are still held in the ruin on occasions such as Palm Sunday, when a procession leaves for All Hallows along St Dunstan's Hill and Great Tower Street.

What you actually see today. The effect is unlike anything else in London: Gothic window openings with no glass, climbing plants — Virginia creeper, wisteria, winter jasmine — running up the inside of the walls, palms and small trees where the pews were, and the sky where the roof used to be. Wren's spire rises above it all, still structurally sound after two destructions. The planting is deliberately soft and slightly unkempt, which is what makes the ruin read as a garden rather than a monument. In the last decade the site has become one of the most photographed corners of the City, heavily used for portrait, fashion and social-media shoots, and the Corporation has had to manage the pressure with signage asking visitors to keep the space usable for everyone. Commercial photography and filming require a permit from the Corporation, which is worth knowing before turning up with a tripod and lights.

Reading the ruin. Walk the perimeter first, at the upper level on St Dunstan's Hill, to see how Laing's 1821 walls meet Wren's 1701 tower — the joint between the two campaigns is legible in the stone. Then descend into the nave. The window tracery is Laing's Perpendicular revival, not medieval work, and comparing it with genuine 15th-century tracery elsewhere in the City is a quick lesson in how the Gothic Revival read its models.

Getting there and timing. From Monument station, walk east along Eastcheap and turn down St Dunstan's Hill; from Tower Hill, head west along Great Tower Street. The garden is free, open daily, and closes in the evening. It is busiest between noon and 2pm on weekdays, when City workers take their lunch there, and quietest early in the morning — which is also when the light is best, coming in low through the east window openings. Access is the one difficulty: the site sits below street level and is reached by steps from the upper entrance, though a ramped approach exists from the lower gate. Combine it with the Tower of London, ten minutes east.