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Christopher Wren rebuilt St Bride’s Church in Fleet Street after the Great Fire of London although his structure was destroyed in the Blitz and had to be rebuilt. The spire of St Bride’s Church is known as the ‘wedding cake spire’ as the modern wedding cake is based on its tiered structure.

Bombs revealed remains of buildings on the site dating back to Roman times and these can now be seen in the crypt.

Simon Jenkins in ‘England’s Thousand Best Churches’ says of the spire of St Bride’s: “The composition of 1671-8 is one of Wren’s beat-known creations, a shrine floating across a sea of roofs. I used to lift my gaze from many a tedious Fleet Street meeting and see St Bride’s pinning London to the realm of sanity. St Bride’s was gutted in the war and rebuilt by the ubiquitous restorer of City churches, Godfrey Allen, in 1957. As so often Allen decided not to reinstate Wren’s design but to go for 20th century ‘neo Wren’. His new St Bride’s is a success, being all of a piece and retaining Wren’s proportions.”