Shoreditch Church
Shoreditch High Street, Shoreditch, London E1 6JN
Shoreditch Church – or St Leonards, as it’s also known – sits at the meeting point of all the major Roman roads that linked London with outlying provincial towns, and is only the latest in a long line of churches on the site. The 18th-century building, with its slender columns and pediment, still has a shabby but imposing presence, despite having been over-restored by the Victorians and damaged during the Blitz. It’s known that there was an Anglo-Saxon church here, and in Shakespeare’s time St Leonard’s was known as the actors’ church – members of the famous Burbage family are buried in remnants of the medieval church under the crypt.