There is an excellent opportunity to visit St. Anne’s, Limehouse over the next fortnight when the church is open every day from 10 to 4 for Open House, made the more interesting by having an exhibition on the long history of the six surviving Hawksmoor churches, including material about the near demolition of St. Mary Woolnoth in the nineteenth century and their rediscovery and reappraisal by Elizabeth and Wayland Young in the 1950s.  There are some disarmingly salacious communications from John Betjeman to Elizabeth Young who he obviously fancied like mad and in those days made no effort to conceal.  The church was used as a backdrop for a Vogue fashion shoot in 1962 and there is a very informative video of Nicholas Serota talking about the Whitechapel’s exhibition on Hawksmoor in 1976, which must have led to the establishment of the Friends of Christ Church, Spitalfields in 1977.  And there are big wall mounted photographs by Hélène Binet first shown at the Venice Biennale.

The church could not have looked more beautiful in the September sun:-