[Marchitecture 2025] Christchurch Greyfriars - 1. Intro

I am pleased to present to you my first (hopefully not last, but we'll see) entry for Marchitecture 2025, and indeed my first serious MOC ever shared publicly: a rendition of Christchurch Greyfriars, a ruined church designed by Sir Christopher Wren which sits in the heart of London! This is a digitally rendered model currently sitting at 1186 pieces; my intent is to also build it in real life somewhen soon. The subsequent pictures in this album go into detail about the construction of the model itself, so for now, let me instead begin by telling you about the building it depicts.

 

Christchurch (or in some sources 'Christ Church') Greyfriars has a somewhat turbulent history, having gone through several changes over the centuries. Initially, the site was home to a small mid-thirteenth century church, whose name derived from the grey habits of its Franciscan friars. This was soon replaced, however, by a larger building, which stood for just under two centuries until the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1538 by Henry VIII, which saw the church plundered, defaced, and relegated to being used for storage. Records indicate that the alabaster and marble monuments from the church were sold in 1545 for £50 - equivalent to roughly £28,000 today! Eight years after the church's dissolution, Henry gave it to the City of London Corporation, ending this period of tumult and restoring the building to its original ecclesiastical use.

 

After 1546, the church stood undisturbed for 120 years, until it was entirely destroyed in the Great Fire of London. It then became one of the many such destroyed churches to be rebuilt according to designs by the esteemed Sir Christopher Wren, who after some deliberation settled on a smaller building than the original medieval one; the western part of the site became a simple churchyard, and remains as such today. From this point, the church saw its longest peaceful stretch, remaining unchanged from 1666 to 1940 other than the addition of a vestry house in 1760.

 

The German bombing campaign on the UK during World War II put a stop to that restful period; eight Christopher Wren churches were set aflame by firebombs on the night of December 29th, 1940, with Greyfriars being one of them. The interior of the church was fully destroyed; the tower and the exterior walls remained standing, albeit unstable and smoke-scarred. In 1960, the steeple was reassembled with modern construction methods to preserve it, and a new vestry house was constructed in imitation of the original in 1981 - the exterior walls, however, had no such luck, being partially demolished in 1962 in order to make room for the expansion of an adjoining road. The former interior of the church was converted to a public garden, whose arrangement was intended to mimic the building's layout: box hedges delineate the church pews, with wooden trellises standing where stone columns were originally set. Finally, in 2002, the road expansion which had led to the partial demolition of the building's walls was undone, allowing for the church's original footprint to be restored by way of a low wall with a commemorative plaque. This is the state one can find the site in today; the church no longer has any religious use, with the gardens being open to the public and the vestry housing a dental office. The tower hosts - bizarrely - a twelve-level private residence, which appears to be rather cramped, but which nevertheless sold for £3,675,000 in 2021!

 

Sources:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_Church_Greyfriars

alondoninheritance.com/london-churches/christchurch-greyf...

www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/inflati...

themodernhouse.com/past-sales/the-church-tower

 

Note: for this render, I used the ImportLDraw plugin by TobyLobster to import the model into Blender, but LDraw library issues meant that a handful of parts were unavailable compared to in Studio, necessitating replacements. Other than these changes, the model is presented exactly as I built it in Studio, and should be entirely buildable in real life. The specific part replacements were:

- Part 5264 (Plate, Round 1 x 1 with Clip on Bottom) in Black was replaced with part 79194 (Plate, Round 1 x 1 with Bar Handle on Long Stem). This is visible on the traffic light in the bottom-right of the model; in the render, the round plate magically attaches seamlessly to the bar, whereas in reality this is a standard clip attachment.

- Part 5489 (Brick, Round 2 x 2 D. 45 degrees Elbow (27.7mm Standing Height)) in Reddish Brown was replaced with part 65473 (Brick, Round 2 x 2 D. 45 degrees Elbow (25.5mm Standing Height)). This is why the trunk of the large tree has a slight gap, as the old mould for this part is slightly smaller than the newer one.

- Part 5256 (Brick, Round 2 x 2 with 4 Roots / Feet and Axle Hole) in Reddish Brown was replaced with part 3941 (Brick, Round 2 x 2 with Axle Hole). All of the Animal Crossing villagers are very sad about this.

- Two instances of part 80497 (Elephant Tail / Trunk with Bar End - Long Straight Tip) in Reddish Brown were replaced with part 43892 (Elephant Tail / Trunk with Bar End - Short Curved Tip). This produces essentially no difference whatsoever.

Done