Finsbury St Matthew City Road

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The church of St. Matthew City Road, is located in Finsbury (see St. Luke Finsbury), on that street called City Road. The parish was built and commenced by the year 1848.

[Also known as] the church of St. Luke [Old Street], Middlesex, is situated on the north side and near the centre of Old Street, and owes its rise to the great increase of buildings in the parish of St. Giles Cripplegate. Commissioners purchased a piece of ground for erecting the 50 churches in the reign of Queen Anne, upon which it stands, and erected one of those churches. The inhabitants afterwards applied to parliament and had the Middlesex liberty of St. Giles Cripplegate assigned to them for their parish. The church was finished in 1732, and was consecrated in the following year, on St. Luke's day, when the name was given as its patron. The church is very substantially built of Portland stone and has an obelisk by way of a spire. The announcement of this church is a rectory in the county and archdeaconry of Middlesex, in the diocese of London and in the patronage of the Dean in chapter of St. Paul's. This parish has also recently erected by the church or chapel of ease in Kings Square, Goswell Street road [called St Barnabas, which see]...  which is a curacy in the patronage of the rector, and the commissioners for new churches are building another church [in approximately 1830, called St. James, which see] in the parish which is neither finished nor instituted¹.

FINSBURY, one of the newly-enfranchised metropolitan boroughs, comprising parts of the Finsbury and Holborn divisions of the hundred of Ossulstone, county of Middlesex, with some places of exempt jurisdiction; the whole containing 265,043 inhabitants [as of 1848]. It sends two members to parliament, under the provisions of the Reform act: the right of election is vested in the £10 householders, and the returning officer is annually appointed by the sheriff.—See Islington, Clerkenwell, &amp;c².

1. Adapted from: A Topographical Dictionary of Londonby James Elmes; published 1831

2. Adapted from: A Topographical Dictionary of England (1848), pp. 235-238.