St Dunstan in the West is the westernmost church in the City of London.
The Great Fire stopped a few doors east and the church was not burned but it was entirely rebuilt about 1833 in the Gothic style.
In the old church the poet John Donne was once vicar, and Isaac Walton, author of "The Compleat Angler" was a vestryman. Walton described how Donne would preach "in earnest, weeping sometime for his Auditory, sometime with them; always preaching to himself, like an Angel from a cloud...".
On the exterior of the new church is a survivor from the old one - a famous oddity of a clock from 1670, described by Strype: "two savages or Hercules, with clubs erect, which quarterly strike the two bells hanging there." The clubs still strike at the quarter hour.
The church is used by the Russian Orthodox Church, and contains impressive iconic imagery.
Digital photograph
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