St Stephen Walbrook
St Stephen Walbrook, City of London
We have served as consulting engineers for over a decade at St Stephen Walbrook, a Grade I listed church in the City of London.
Designed by Sir Christopher Wren and constructed between 1672 and 1679 after the Great Fire of London, it is considered a masterpiece of his City Churches and a precursor to St Paul’s Cathedral. It features a large central dome, a rectangular plan, and an interior supported by sixteen Corinthian columns forming a cruciform barrel vault.
The church has long experienced structural movement due to poor ground conditions linked to the culverted river Walbrook and nearby redevelopment.
Furthermore, the construction of an adjacent building led to crack propagation on the church’s external elevations, the nave’s western end, and the tower. Further significant movement occurred during the excavation of a deep basement west of Walbrook, prompting our appointment to assess the structural impact on the church.
Following extensive monitoring and investigation, structural and cosmetic repairs began, undertaken with the Church Architect (Caroe Architecture) and aligned with the Quinquennial Report. These utilised scaffold access and a scheduled closure period and used traditional craftsmanship, particularly in lime plaster and stonemasonry, to achieve a sensitive restoration.
The project won the ‘Restoration of a Georgian Building in an Urban Setting’ award at The Georgian Group Awards.
Client: St Stephen Walbrook/Bob Wilson Consultancy
Architects: Caroe Architecture
Main image: By Diliff - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32215618