This church is on the south side of St Giles High Street, which continues the curve of High Holborn back to New Oxford Street at Tottenham Court Road. The origin of a church on or near this site was a chapel attached to a hospital for lepers established in 1101 by Matilda, Queen of Henry I. The chapel served both the inmates and the residents of the little village of St Giles. (St Giles was the patron saint of lepers, and churches dedicated to him were generally outside the city walls where lepers and invalids gathered.)
In medieval times and up to the nineteenth century, when New Oxford Street was built, the road to Tyburn ran from Cheapside, the city market, out of Newgate and eventually where St Giles High Street runs today. Consequently, carts bearing condemned criminals to execution at Tyburn passed this way, and it became a custom to toll the church bell when the cart went by. Another custom was for the local tavern to offer the condemned man a last bowl of ale. The bodies of some of these poor wretches were brought back to be buried in the churchyard. A number of Catholic martyrs, including the famous Oliver 186 187 S Plunkett, archbishop of Armagh, are buried in the churchyard as well.
The area grew considerably by the seventeenth century, and it was one of the hardest hit by the Great Plague of 1665. Later it became one of London’s most notorious slums and a refuge for criminals. Church Lane, which once ran between St Giles High Street and New Oxford Street, is cited by a Victorian survey of London as a place to avoid even in daylight. The present church, constructed in 1730–34 by Henry Flintcroft, has spacious grounds behind it, which still give a feeling of being ‘in the fields’. The tall clock tower and spire rising amid the trees are a pleasant sight from the High Street. Inside is the original model of the present building. The nave has a beautiful barrel-vaulted plaster ceiling, but the stained glass was unfortunately destroyed in the blitz. There are several interesting memorials and, in addition to the fine mahogany pulpit of 1676, there is a plain pulpit in the north aisle brought from West Street Chapel where it was frequently used by the Wesley brothers. Services here are conducted using the traditional prayer-book of 1662.