Bow Church was licensed in 1311 as a chapel of ease in the parish of St Dunstan’s, Stepney, on a site ‘in the middle of the King’s highway’ granted by King Edward III.

The original building was largely replaced in the 1490s by the church we see today. The rubble stone north aisle wall may date from the 14th century, a relic of the previous structure. Though battered by weather, time, war and restoration, St Mary’s remains essentially the church of the medieval village of Bow. It became a parish church, independent of St Dunstan’s in 1719, and the parish united with Holy Trinity Mile End in 2006.

The late 15th-century ashlar masonry tower, with its eroded perpendicular window, has been particularly battered. The upper storey collapsed in a storm in 1829 and was restored in a battlemented, ‘medieval’ style. This work was destroyed in the 1941 Blitz and replaced by H. S. Goodhart Rendel with an elegant design in brick. Goodhart Rendel added a clock in a wooden tower and a cupola to his post-War restoration of the church. Restoration work on the tower and cupola was carried out by Thomas Ford and Partners in 2018.

The aisles, clerestory and chancel have straight-headed late perpendicular windows. The south aisle wall was refaced in 1794. Goodhart Rendel added the ‘Tuscan’ south porch, no longer in use; he did not anticipate today’s traffic. The brick vestries date from the early 18th century and from 1900.

Inside the church, a tall tower arch with moulded capitals on rounded shafts, leads to six irregular bays of low octagonal columns. These are probably original to the 1490s but have been restored and made more uniform. Notice the lack of symmetry, the different widths of the aisles and the slight difference in the alignment of the chancel and nave. The chancel, with its painted late-medieval roof, was raised and tiled by A.W Blomfield in 1881.

Repeated calls in the 19th century for the demolition and replacement of the decayed building were nearly heeded when the chancel roof collapsed in 1896. However, the fledgling conservation movement, including C.R. Ashbee and the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings (SPAB), ensured that the church was instead restored in a three-year project, undertaken by Osborn C. Hills. Wall panelling, double glazing, and the outer vestry were provided and Ashbee himself designed new choir stalls. In 1902 St Mary’s was the subject of the second monograph of the Survey of London.

The unusual but striking east window, with its pastiche classical aedicules, curtains, fountains, vases, and various small animals was designed by Goodhart Rendel’s partner, H. Lewis Curtis. It lacks any obvious Christian symbolism, but close inspection reveals that the design draws on the church layout and architecture. For example, Arthur Broome was a perpetual curate at St Mary, Bromley St Leonard, 1820-24. Since Broome was a co-founder of the RSPCA this may explain why a squirrel, owl, pigeons, mice and a cat can be found in the east window.

The coupled rafter roof, obscured for several centuries by an 18th-century plaster ceiling has also been much restored.

The font, said to be from the time of Henry V, was replaced in the 1620s and left in the minister’s front garden. Brought back into the church in Victorian times, it took the full impact of the collapse of the bombed tower, hence its battered state.

There are memorials in the church from every century of its life, including – Grace Amcottes (1551); Thomas Jordan (1671); Alice Coborn (1689); Prisca Coborn (1701); The Rust Family (1704); James & Dorothy Walker (1712); Ann Driffield, wife of an eminent Rector, (1878) and, in the St Stephen’s Chapel, local people who fell in both World Wars. A memorial to local MP George Lansbury was unveiled by his granddaughter Dame Angela Lansbury in May 2011.

A vault under the church has about 50 coffins, sealed for health and safety reasons, and has not been entered for over a century.

The churchyard was created in 1825, when buildings that for centuries had crowded close to the church, were demolished. The church was not the only building on the island site it occupies today. The churchyard is narrow, elongated and tapers at both ends (some say it is coffin-shaped). Previously at the east end there would have been Sir John Jolles’ school – a gabled building – and a small market-place with a cage, or lock-up, for law-breakers.

In 1895 the Metropolitan Parks & Garden Authority designed what is still the basic layout of the churchyard. There are few interesting tombstones, though the grave slab of minister Thomas White (d. 1709) has been removed from the chancel to a site north of the tower. The memorial by the gate is to Joseph Dawson and listed Grade II by Historic England. The gothic railings were reinstated in 1984 but frequently suffer damage from traffic.

The statue of Prime Minister William Gladstone, outside the church gates, sculpted by Albert Bruce-Joy, was donated by the directors of the Bryant and May match factory and was erected in 1887.

Bow Church has been at the centre of a medieval hamlet, a prosperous Georgian suburb, and a teeming, poverty-stricken, Victorian slum. It remains one of the most familiar landmarks of the eastern East End.

Yet the building has been on the Heritage at Risk register since 2014. In the summer of 2018, extensive restoration work on the stonework and clock cupola was completed, thanks to funding from the Heritage Fund with contributions from others such as LB of Tower Hamlets and the National Churches Trust. Phase 2 of that restoration project included the installation of new toilets plus works to the chancel roof and some drainage repairs.

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