Sacred London

St Alfege Church

Hawksmoor's first church, on the spot where the Danes killed an archbishop in 1012, with Thomas Tallis and General Wolfe in its ground and Henry VIII in its font.

ChurchesHawksmoorMusic & choirs

On 19 April 1012 the Danes who had sacked Canterbury and held Archbishop Alfege for ransom at their camp in Greenwich got drunk at a feast, pelted him with ox bones and finished him with an axe when the money did not come, and the church has stood on the spot of his death ever since: Henry VIII was baptised in it in 1491, Thomas Tallis, the composer of the Tudor chapel royal, was buried in it in 1585, and when the medieval building collapsed in a storm in 1710 the parish petitioned Parliament and got the first of the fifty new churches. Nicholas Hawksmoor built it between 1712 and 1714, his first church, a plain rectangle with a Doric portico facing the street and a tower at the wrong end, and inside a flat ceiling over a wide space of galleries and dark wood. General Wolfe, who took Quebec and died doing it in 1759, was brought home to the family vault here. A bomb in 1941 burned the roof and dropped it into the nave; the restoration of 1953 put the church back, and the organ and the choir keep Tallis's tradition with free recitals twice a week.

Where

Greenwich Church Street, SE10 9BJ

Nearest station

Cutty Sark for Maritime Greenwich · 2 min walk

Hours

Hours from the page that lists them, checked 8 September 2026.

Free lunchtime recitals on Thursdays and Saturdays at 13:05; closed Mondays except bank holidays.

NearbySacred London

• All Hallows-by-the-Tower Crypt Museum1 hr 13 min walk
• St Olave Hart Street1 hr 15 min walk
• Southwark Cathedral1 hr 18 min walk

NearbyOther Categories

• Dark Sugars Cocoa HouseDesserts & Gelato1 min walk
• Dark Sugars Ice CreamsDesserts & Gelato1 min walk
• Greenwich MarketFood Markets2 min walk

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