People come to admire the architecture and furnishings, to spend time in prayer or reflection, and to attend events both secular and religious. 

After three hundred and forty years of serving the City of London, it is time to renew St Mary Abchurch so that it can continue to fulfil its historic purposes and also seek new ways to serve the City in the future.

Previous clergy, Churchwardens, Guild Church Council members, and the Friends of the City Churches, have done what they could to maintain the building, but now a lot needs to be put right:

• The building needs to be repaired inside and out (you might have noticed the cracks)
• The magnificent mural inside the dome needs to be repaired and cleaned
• The entire interior needs to be redecorated, the electrics need to be replaced, and a new lighting scheme is needed
• The dying gas boiler needs to be replaced by air source heat pumps

With the new entrance to Bank tube station now open, St Mary Abchurch is arguably the best connected church in the country, and has enormous potential as a place for public worship and private prayer, a focus for the study of Wren’s architecture, a place to learn heritage conservation skills, a performance space for music and drama, and a place to discuss the relationship between the Christian Faith and social and economic ethics: but in order to meet that potential it needs a few sensitive changes to be made, with care being taken that the changes will not compromise the building’s architectural integrity.

• We need a toilet accessible to wheelchair users
• The building needs a kitchen that meets current standards
• The vestry needs to become a meeting room rather than a corridor to the only toilet in the building
• We need state of the art audio-visual equipment
• The pipe organ needs to be repaired so that it can be used again
• The choir pews need to be movable so that we can create more space for performers
• Ideally, the Victorian varnish needs to be removed from the reredos, the furnishings, and the panelling, in order to reveal the beauty of Wren’s internal design and of the work of the carvers.
• Ramps are needed to enable the entire building to be accessible to wheelchair users.

St Mary Abchurch hosts a wide variety of activities: midweek lunchtime services; a weekly organ recital; carol services; regular and occasional community group meetings of various kinds; a wide variety of other events (including the Candlewick Ward annual mote and polling station); and for two and half years we ran a ‘Word of the Month’ educational project, with occasional ‘Third Thursday’ lectures and discussions. 

Once the building is conserved, and minor sensitive alterations have been made, we shall be able to develop all of these activities; we shall be better able to host lectures, debates, exhibitions, recitals, and much more; and we shall be able to undertake the major projects that we are planning: a Wren Institute, for research and education about Christopher Wren and his architectural, scientific, astronomical, and mathematical interests; and an Abchurch Institute: a focus for study of the relationship between the Christian Faith and social and economic ethics. 

The refurbishment of St Mary Abchurch will happen in phases: the first main phase will include internal and external repairs, redecoration, rewiring, new lighting, air source heat pumps, ramps, a new kitchen, an accessible toilet, and audiovisual equipment. The dome will be refurbished in the second phase, and then the furnishings in the third: and during these two phases we shall build on projects held at St Mary Abchurch during the Wren300 celebrations in 2023 by teaching conservation skills as the refurbishment is carried out. The pipe organ will be rebuilt in the final phase. 

Planning is almost complete for the first phase of Abchurch Renewed and we hope that contractors will be moving in during the Summer of 2026.